MENTAL STATE OF THE PRIESTHOOD IN ITALY.
First Impressions in Rome erroneous--The unseen Rome--Her
devotement to one thing--In what light do the Priests in Italy
regard their own System?--Can they possibly believe their Cheats to
be Miracles?--A goodly number of the Priests Infidels--Others never
thought on the subject--Some have strong Misgivings--Others
convinced of the Falsehood of that Church, but lack Courage or
Opportunity to leave it--Making Allowance for all these Classes,
the Majority of Priests do believe in their System--The Explanation
of this--The real Ruler in the Church of Rome, not the Pope, nor
the Cardinals, nor the Jesuits, but the System--Human
Machinery--The Pontiff--The College of Cardinals--Antonelli--The
Bishops and Priests--The Jesuits--Their Activity and Importance at
Rome--Their Appearance described.
When an Englishman visits the Eternal City, he is very apt, during the
first days of his sojourn, to underrate the power and influence of the
Papal system. At home he has been used to see power associated with
splendour, and surrounded with the fruits and monuments of intelligence.
At Rome everything on which he sets his eye bears marks of a growing
barbarism and decay. Outside the walls of the city is a vast desert,
attesting the utter extinction of industry. Within is an air of
stagnation and idleness, which bespeaks the utter absence of all mental
activity. A very considerable portion of the population have no
occupation but begging. The naked heads, necks, and feet of the monks
and friars are offensive from want of cleanliness. The higher
ecclesiastics even are coarse and vulgar men. The fine monuments reared
by the taste and wealth of former ages want keeping. Their churches,
despite the paintings and statuary with which they are filled, are
rendered disagreeable by the beggars that haunt them, and the incense
that is continually burned in them. Their very processions do not rise
above a tawdry half-barbaric grandeur; and one must be far gone in the
Puseyite malady before such exhibitions can inspire him with anything
like reverence. The visitor looks around on this strange scene, so
unlike what his imagination had pictured, and exclaims, "Where and in
what lies the secret of this city's power?" Here there is neither art,
nor industry, nor wealth, nor knowledge! Here all the bodily and all the
mental faculties of man appear to be folded up in a worse than mediaeval
stupor. Where are the elements of that power for which this city is
renowned, and by which she is able to thwart and control the civilized
and powerful Governments of the north of Europe? Would, says he to
himself, that those who venerate Rome when divided from her by the Alps
and the ocean, would come here and see with their own eyes her
contemptible vileness and inconceivable degradation; and that those
statesmen who are moved by a secret fear to bow the knee to her, would
come hither and mark the baseness of her before whom they are content to
lower the honour and independence of their country! Such, we say, are
the first impressions of the visitor to Rome.
But a few days suffice to correct this erroneous estimate. The person
looks around him; he looks below him. There he discovers the real Rome.
It is not the Rome that is seen,--it is the Rome that is unseen,--before
which the nations tremble. Beneath his feet are tremendous agencies at
work. There are the pent-up fires that shake the globe. Rome, cut off
from all the world, and surrounded by leagues of silent and blackened
deserts, is the centre of energies that rest not day nor night, and the
action of which is felt at the very extremities of the earth. It seems,
indeed, as if Rome had been set free from all the anxieties and labours
which occupy the minds and hands of the rest of the world, of very
purpose that she might attend to only one thing. The labours of the
husbandman and the artificer she has forborne. Like the lilies of the
field, she toils not, neither does she spin. She sits in the midst of
her deserts, like the sorceress on the heath, or the conspirator in his
den, hatching plots against the world. Rome is the pandemonium of the
earth, and the Pope is the Lucifer of the world's drama. Fallen he is
from the heaven of power and grandeur which he occupied in the twelfth
century; and he and his compeers lie sunk in a very gulph of anarchy and
barbarism. Lifting up his eyes, he beholds afar off the happy nations of
Protestantism, reaping the reward of a free Bible and a free Government,
in the riches of their commerce and the stability of their power. The
sight is tormenting and intolerable, and the pontiff is stung thereby
into ceaseless attempts to retrieve his fall. If he cannot mount to his
old seat, and sit there once more in superhuman pride and unapproachable
power above the bodies and the souls of men, he may at least hope to
draw down those he so much envies into the same gulph with himself.
Hence the villanies and plots of all kinds of which Rome is full, and
which form a source of danger to the nations of Christendom, from which
they may hope to be delivered only when the Papacy shall have been
finally destroyed.
What I propose here is to sketch the _mental state_ of the priests of
Italy, so far as my opportunities enabled me to judge. The subject is
more recondite than the foregoing; the facts are less accessible; and my
statements must partake more of the inferential than did those embraced
in the former branches of the subject.
The first question that arises is, in what light do the priests in Italy
regard their own system? Do they look upon it as an unrivalled compound
of imposture and tyranny,--a cunning invention for procuring mitres,
tiaras, purple robes, and other good things for themselves? or do they
regard it as indeed founded in truth, and clothed with the sanction of
heaven? They are behind the scenes, and have access to see and hear many
things which are not meant for the eye and ear of the public. The man
who pulls the strings of a winking Madonna can scarce persuade himself,
one should think, that the movement that follows is the effect of
supernatural power. The priest who liquefies the blood of St Januarius
by the warmth of his hand or the warmth of the fire, must know that what
he has performed is neither more nor less than a very ordinary juggle.
The monk who falls a rummaging in the Catacombs, or in any of the old
graveyards about Rome, and finds there a parcel of decayed bones, which
he passes off as those of Saint Theodosia or Saint Anathanasius, but
which are as likely to be the bones of an old pagan, or a Goth, or a
brigand, can hardly believe, one should suppose, his own tale. If the
Pope believes in his own relics, what conceptions must he have of Peter?
What a strange configuration of body must he believe the apostle to have
had! Peter must have been a man with some dozen of heads; with a score
of arms, and a hundred fingers or so on each arm; in short, a perfect
realization of the old pagan fable of the giant Briareus. The Pope must
believe this, or he must believe that he gives his attestation to what
is not true. Above all, one can hardly imagine it possible that any man
in whom reason had not been utterly quenched could believe in the
monstrous dogma of transubstantiation. What! can a priest at any hour he
pleases give existence to Him who exists from eternity? Can he enclose
within a little silver box that Almighty One whom the heaven, even the
heaven of heavens, cannot contain? Let a man confess at the bar of the
High Court of Edinburgh that he believes himself to be God, and the
Court will pronounce that that man is insane, and will hold him
incompetent to manage his affairs. And yet every Roman Catholic priest
professes to believe a more startling dogma,--even that he is the
creator of God. And yet, instead of calling that insanity, we must, I
suppose, call it religion. Seeing, then, the priests are called every
day to do things which their senses must tell them are juggles, and to
profess their belief in dogmas which their reason must tell them are
monstrous and blasphemous absurdities, is it possible, you ask, that the
priests in Italy can believe in their own system? I must here say, that
I do think the majority of them do believe in it.
A goodly number of the priests of Italy are infidels. They no more
believe in the Pope than they believe in the pagan Jupiter. But then,
were they to speak out their disbelief, and to say that purgatory is a
mere bugbear for frightening men and getting their money, they know that
a dungeon would instantly be their lot; and infidelity has little of the
martyr spirit in it. These men, like Leo the Tenth, as thorough an
infidel as ever lived, hold that it would be the height of folly to
quarrel with a fable that brings them so much gain. Others are mere
worldly men. They were never at the pains to inquire whether their
system is true or false. They sing their mass in the morning; they pass
their forenoons at the cafe, sipping coffee, and taking a hand at
cards; a stoup of wine washes down a substantial dinner; and, after a
saunter along the Corso, or an airing on the Pincian, they doff their
clerical vestments, and go to sup with the nuns, who have the reputation
of being excellent cooks.
Others there are whose minds are occasionally visited by strong
misgivings. The cloud, so to speak, will open for a moment, and reveal
to their astonished sight, not the majestic form of Truth, but a
gigantic and monstrous imposture. A mysterious hand at times lifts the
veil, and lo! they find themselves in the presence, not of a divinity,
but of a demon. They disclose their doubts when they next go to
confession. My son, says the father confessor, these are the suggestions
of the Evil One. You must arm yourself against the Tempter by fasting
and penance. A hair shirt or an iron girdle is called in to silence the
voice of reason and the remonstrances of conscience; and here the matter
ends. And there are a few--in every age there have been a few such--in
the Church of Rome, and at present they are very considerably on the
increase, who, in the midst of darkness, by some wondrous means have
seen the light. A tract, a Bible, or some Protestant friend whom
Providence had thrown in their way, or some one of the few passages of
Scripture inserted in their Breviary, may have taught them a better way
than that of Rome. Instead of stopping short at the altar of Mary, or at
any of the thousand shrines which Rome has erected as so many barriers
between the sinner and God, they go at once to the Divine mercy-seat,
and pour their supplications direct into the ear of the Great Mediator.
You ask, why do these men remain in a Church which they see to be
apostate? Fain would they fly, but they know not how or where. They lift
their eyes to the Alps on the one side,--to the ocean on the other.
Alas! they may surmount these barriers; but more difficult still than
to scale the mountains or to traverse the ocean is it to escape beyond
the power of Rome. Woe to the unhappy man who begins to feel his
fetters! He awakes to find that he is in a wide prison, with a sentinel
posted at every outlet: escape seems hopeless; and the man buries his
secret in his breast.
Some few there are who, more daring by nature, or specially strengthened
from above, adventure on the immense hazards of flight. Of these, some
are caught, thrown into a dungeon, and are heard of no more. Others find
their way to England, or some other Protestant State. But here new
trials await them. They are ignorant of our language perhaps. They find
themselves among strangers, whose manners seem to them cold and distant.
They are without means of living; and, carrying with them too, it may
be, some of the stains of their former profession, they encounter
difficulties which are the more stumbling that they are unexpected. On
these various grounds, the number of priests who leave the Church of
Rome has been, and always will be, small, till some great revolution or
upbreak takes place in that Church.
But, making the most ample allowance for all these classes,--for the men
who are atheists and infidels,--for the mere worldings, whose only tie
to their Church is the gain it brings them,--and for those who are
either doubters, or whose doubts have passed into full conviction that
the Church of the Pope is not the Church of Jesus Christ,--making, I
say, full allowance for all these, I have little doubt that the majority
of the priests in Italy,--it may be not much more than a majority, but
still a majority,--are sincere believers in their system.
They are not ignorant of the frauds, the knaveries, the fables, and
hypocrisies, by which that system is supported. They cannot shut their
eyes to these, which they regard, in fact, as sanctified by the end to
which they are devoted; but they separate between these and the system
itself; and though they cannot tell the line where truth ends and
falsehood begins, still they look upon their system, on the whole, as
founded in truth, and carrying with it the sanction of Heaven. Indeed,
belief is a weak term to express the power the system has over them. It
is rather a paralyzing awe, a freezing terror, like that with which his
grim deity inspires the barbarian, which holds captive the strongest
mind, and lays reason and conscience prostrate in the dust. Such I
believe to be the state of mind of the greater number of the Italian
priesthood.
But how comes this? What is it which has produced this universal
slavery? Is it the Pope? Is it the cardinals? Is it the Jesuits? No; for
these men, though the tyrants of others, are themselves slaves. All are
bound by the same chain of adamant, to the car of the same demon. A
mournful procession of dead men truly, with the triple crown in front,
and the sandals of the barefooted Capuchin bringing up the rear. What is
it, I repeat, that holds the whole body in subjection, from the Pope
down to the friar? It is the system, the abstract system, with its
overwhelming prestige,--that system which lives on though popes die; the
genius of the Papacy, if you will. This is the real monarch of that
spiritual kingdom.
A little power of mental abstraction,--and the subtile genius of the
Italian gives him that power in a high degree,--will enable any one to
separate betwixt the system and its agents. Some one has remarked, that
he could form an abstraction of a lord mayor, not only without his
horse, and gown, and gold chain, but even without the stature, features,
hands, and feet of any particular lord mayor. The same can be done of
the Papacy. We can form an abstraction of the Papacy not only without
the tiara and the keys, but even without the stature and lineaments, the
hands and feet, of any particular Pope. When we have formed such an
abstraction, we have got the real ruler of the Papacy. That it is the
system that is the dominant power in the Church of Rome, is evident from
this one fact, namely, that councils have sometimes deposed the Pope to
save the Papacy. There is in the Pope's kirk, then, a power greater than
the Pope. The system has taken body and shape, as it were, and sits upon
the Seven Hills, a mysterious, awe-inspiring divinity or demon; and the
Pope, equally with the friar, bows his head and does obeisance. Wherever
the pontiff looks,--whether backward into history, or around him in the
world,--there are the monuments of this ever living, ever present, and
all pervading power. It requires more force than the mind of fallen man
is capable of, to believe that a system which has filled history with
its deeds and the world with its trophies, which has compelled the
homage of myriads and myriads of minds, and before which the haughtiest
conquerors and the most puissant intellects have bowed with the docility
of children, is, after all, an unreality,--a mere spectre of the middle
ages,--a ghost conjured up by credulity and knavery from the tombs of
defunct idolatries. This, I say, is the true state of things in Italy.
Its priesthood are subdued by their own system,--by its high claims to
antiquity,--its world-wide dominion,--its imposing though faded
magnificence,--its perverted logic,--its pseudo sanctity. These not only
carry it over the reason, but in some degree over the senses also; and
the more fully persuaded the priests are of the truth and divinity of
their system, they feel only the more fully warranted to employ fraud
and force in its support,--the winking Madonna to convince one class,
and the dungeon and the iron chain to silence the other.
Having spoken of the abstract and spiritual power that reigns over
Italy, and, I may say, over the whole Catholic world, let me now speak
of the corporeal and human machinery by which the Papacy is carried on.
First comes the Pope. Pio Nono is a man of sixty-three. His years and
the various misfortunes of his reign sit lightly upon him. Were the Pope
much given to reflection, there are not wanting unpleasant topics enough
to darken the clear Italian sunlight, as it streams in through the
windows of the Vatican palace. Once was he chased from Rome; and now
that he is returned, can he call Rome his own? Not he. The real master
of Rome is the commandant of the French garrison. And while outside the
walls are the dead whom he slew with the sword of France, inside are the
living, whose sullen scowl or fierce glare he may see through the French
files, as he rides out of an afternoon.[9] But Pio Nono takes all in
good part. There is not a wrinkle on his brow; no unpleasant thought
appears to shade the jovial light of his broad face. He sits down to
dinner with evidently a good appetite; he sleeps soundly at night, and
troubles not his poor head by brooding over misfortunes which he cannot
mend, or charging himself with the direction of plots which he is not
competent to manage. But, if not fitted to take the lead in cabinets,
nature has formed him to shine in a procession. He has a portly figure,
a face radiant with blandness, dissimulation, and vanity; and he looks
every inch the Pope, as he is carried shoulder-high in St Peter's, and
sits blazing in his jewelled tiara and purple robes, between two huge
fans of peacocks' feathers. To these accomplishments he adds that of a
fine voice; and when he gives his blessing from the balcony of St
Peter's, or assembles the Romans in the Forum, as he did on a late
occasion, when he lifted up hands dripping with his subjects' blood, to
call his hearers to repentance, his tones ring out, in the deep calm air
of Rome, clear and loud as those of a bell. Such is the man who is the
nominal head of the Papacy. We say the _nominal_ head; for such a system
as the Papacy, involving the consideration of so many interests, and
requiring such skilful steering to clear the rocks and quicksands amid
which the bark of Peter is now moving, demands the presence at the helm
of a steadier hand and a clearer eye than those of Pio Nono.
I come next to the College of Cardinals. In so large a body we find, as
might be expected, various grades of both intellectual and moral
character; and of course there are the corresponding indications on
their faces. An overbearing arrogance, which always communicates to the
countenance an air of vulgarity, more or less, is a very prevailing
trait. The average intellect in the sacred college is not so high as one
would expect in men who have risen to the top of their profession; and
for this reason, perhaps, that birth has fully more to do with their
elevation than talent or services. One scrutinises their faces curiously
when one remembers that these men are the living representatives of the
apostles. They profess to hold the rank, to be clothed with the
functions, and to inherit the supernatural endowments, of the first
inspired preachers. There you may look for the burning eloquence of a
Paul, the boldness of a Peter, the love of a John, the humility,
patience, zeal, of all. You go round the circle, and examine one by one
the faces of these living Pauls and Peters. Verily, if their prototypes
were like their modern representatives, the spread of the gospel at
first was by far the mightiest miracle the world ever saw. On one you
find the unmistakeable marks of sordid appetite and self-indulgence: on
another, low intrigue has imprinted the most sinister lines: a third is
a mere man of the world;--his prayers and vigils have been kept at the
shrine of pleasure. But along with much that is sordid and worldly,
there are astute and far-seeing minds in the sacred college; and
foremost in this class stands Antonelli. His pale face, and clear, cold,
penetrating eye, reveal the presiding genius of the Papacy. He is the
Prime Minister of the Pope; and though his is not the brow on which the
tiara sits, he is the real head of the system. From his station on the
Seven Hills his keen eye watches and directs every movement in the papal
world. Those mighty projects which the Papacy is endeavouring to realize
in every part of the earth have their first birth in his fertile and
daring brain.
His family are well known at Rome, and some of his ancestors were men of
renown in their own way. His uncle was the most famous Italian brigand
of modern times, and his exploits are still celebrated in the popular
songs of the country. The occupation of the yet more celebrated nephew
is not so dissimilar after all; for what is Antonelli, but the leader of
a crew of bandits, whose hordes scour Europe, arrayed in sacerdotal
garb, and in the name of heaven rob men of their wealth, their liberty,
and their souls, and carry back their booty to their den on the Seven
Hills.
Next come the Bishops and Priests. These men are the agents and spies of
the cardinals, as the cardinals of the Pope. The time which they are
required to devote to spiritual, or rather, I should say, to official
duties, is small indeed. To study the Scriptures, visit the sick,
instruct the people, which form the proper work of ministers of the
gospel, are duties altogether unknown in Rome. There, as I have said,
they convert and save men, not by preaching, but by giving them wafers
to swallow. This is a short and simple process; and when a priest has
gone through this pantomime once, he can repeat it all his days after
without the slightest preparation. Their time and energies, therefore,
can be almost wholly devoted to other work. And what is that work? It
is, in short, to propagate their superstition, and rivet the fetters of
the priesthood upon the population. The bishops and priests manage the
upper classes; and for the lower grades of Romans there are friars and
monks of every order and of every colour. The city swarms with these
men. The frogs and lice of Egypt were not more numerous, and certainly
not more filthy. Unwashed and uncombed, they enter, with their sandalled
feet and shaven crowns, every dwelling, and penetrate into every bosom.
You see them in the wine-shops; you see them mixing with the populace on
the street; while others, with wallets on their backs, may be seen
climbing the stairs of the houses, for the double purpose of begging for
the poor, but in reality for their own paunch, and of retailing the
latest miracle, or some thousand times told legend. Thus the darkness is
carried down to the very bottom of society; and while the Pope and his
cardinals sit at the summit in gilded glory, the monk, in robe of serge
and girdle of rope, is busied at the bottom; and, to support their
individual and united action, the priests have two powerful institutions
at Rome, like foot soldiers advancing under cover of artillery,--the
Confessional and the Inquisition.
But emphatically _the_ order at Rome is the Jesuits. They are the prime
movers in all that is done there, as well as the keenest supporters of
the Papacy in all parts of the world. They are the most indefatigable
confessors, as well as the most eloquent preachers. Their regularity is
like that of nature itself. Every hour of the day has its duty; and
their motions are as punctual as that of the heavenly bodies. Duly every
morning as the clock strikes five, they are at the altar or in the
confessional. Their head-quarters are at the Gesu. I shall suppose that
the reader is passing through the long corridor of that magnificent
church. Every three or four paces is a door, leading to a small
apartment, which is occupied by a father. Outside each door hangs a
sheet of paper, on which the father puts a list of the employments for
the day. When he goes out, he sticks a pin opposite the piece of
business which has called him away, so that, should any one call and
find him not within, he can know at once, by consulting the card, how
the father is occupied, and whether he is accessible at that particular
time. Among the items of business which usually appear on the card,
"conference" is now one of very frequent occurrence, which indicates no
inconsiderable amount of business, having reference to foreign parts, at
present on the hands of the order.
I shall suppose that the reader is passing along the Corso. Has he
marked that tall thin man who has just passed him,
"Walking in beauty like the night?"
There is an air of tidiness in his dress, and of comparative cleanliness
on his person. He wears a small round cap, with three corners; or, if a
hat, one of large brim. Neither cowl nor scapular fetters his motions; a
plain black gown, not unlike a frock-coat, envelopes his person. How
softly his footsteps fall! You scarce hear their sound as he glides past
you. His face, how unruffled! As the lake, when the winds are asleep,
hides under a moveless surface, resplendent as a sheet of gold, the dark
caverns at its bottom, so does this calm, impassable face the workings
of the heart beneath. This man holds in his hands the threads of a
conspiracy which is exploding at that moment, mayhap in China, or in the
Pacific, or in Peru, or in London.
He is at Rome at present, and appears in his proper form and dress as a
Jesuit. But that man can change his country, he can change his tongue,
and, Proteus-like, multiply his shapes among mankind. Next year that man
whom you now meet on the streets of Rome may be in Scotland in the
humble guise of a pedlar, vending at once his earthly and his spiritual
wares. Or he may be in England, acting as tutor in some noble family, or
in the humbler capacity of body-servant to a gentleman, or, it may be,
filling a pulpit in the Church of England. He may be a Protestant
schoolmaster in America, a dictator in Paraguay, a travelling companion
in France and Switzerland, a Liberal or a Conservative--as best suits
his purpose--in Germany, a Brahmin in India, a Mandarin in China. He can
be anything and everything,--a believer in every creed, and a worshipper
of every god,--to serve his Church. Rome has hundreds of thousands of
such men spread over all the countries of the world. With the ring of
Gyges, they walk to and fro over the earth, seeing all, yet themselves
unseen. They can unlock the cabinets of statesmen, and enter unobserved
the closets of princes. They can take their seat in synods and
assemblies, and dive into the secrets of families. Their grand work is
to sow the seeds of heresies in Churches and of dissensions in States,
that, when the harvest of strife and division is fully matured, Rome may
come in and reap the fruits.