PIUS IX.
Old age, majesty, and misfortune have a claim to the respect of all
right-minded persons: fear not that I shall be wanting in such
respect.
But truth has also its claims: it also is old, it is majestic, it is
holy, and it is sometimes cruelly ill-treated by men.
I shall not forget that the Pope is sixty-seven years of age, that he
wears a crown officially venerated by a hundred and thirty-nine
millions of Catholics, that his private life has ever been exemplary,
that he observes the most noble disinterestedness upon a throne where
selfishness has long held sway, that he spontaneously commenced his
reign by conferring benefits, that his first acts held out the fairest
hopes to Italy and to Europe, that he has suffered the lingering
torture of exile, that he exercises a precarious and dependent royalty
under the protection of two foreign armies, and that he lives under
the control of a Cardinal. But those who have fallen victims to the
efforts made to replace him on his throne, those whom the Austrians
have, at his request, shot and sabred, in order to re-establish his
authority, and even those who toil in the plague-stricken plains of
the Roman Campagna to fill his treasury, are far more to be pitied
than he is.
Giovanni-Maria, dei Conti Mastai Ferretti, born the 13th May, 1792,
and elected Pope the 16th June, 1846, under the name of Pius IX., is a
man who looks more than his actual age; he is short, obese, somewhat
pallid, and in precarious health. His benevolent and sleepy
countenance breathes good-nature and lassitude, but has nothing of an
imposing character. Gregory XVI., though ugly and pimply, is said to
have had a grand air.
Pius IX. plays his part in the gorgeous shows of the Roman Catholic
Church indifferently well. The faithful who have come from afar to see
him perform Mass, are a little surprised to see him take a pinch of
snuff in the midst of the azure-tinted clouds of incense. In his hours
of leisure he plays at billiards for exercise, by order of his
physicians.
He believes in God. He is not only a good Christian, but a devotee. In
his enthusiasm for the Virgin Mary, he has invented a useless dogma,
and disfigured the Piazza di Spagna by a monument of bad taste. His
morals are pure, as they always have been, even when he was a young
priest: such instances are common enough among our clergy, but rare,
not to say miraculous, beyond the Alps.
He has nephews, who, wonderful to relate, are neither rich nor
powerful, nor even princes. And yet there is no law which prevents him
from spoiling his subjects for the benefit of his family. Gregory
XIII. gave his nephew Ludovisi £160,000 of good paper, worth so much
cash. The Borghese family bought at one stroke ninety-five farms with
the money of Paul V. A commission which met in 1640, under the
presidence of the Reverend Father Vitelleschi, General of the Jesuits,
decided, in order to put an end to such abuses, that the Popes should
confine themselves to entailing property to the amount of £16,000 a
year upon their favourite nephew and his family (with the right of
creating a second heir to the same privileges), and that the portion
of each of their nieces should not exceed £36,000.
I am aware that nepotism fell into desuetude at the commencement of
the eighteenth century; but there was nothing to prevent Pius IX. from
bringing it into fashion again, after the example of Pius VI., if he
chose; but he does not choose to do so. His relations are of the
second order of nobility, and are not rich: he has done nothing to
alter their position. His nephew, Count Mastai Ferretti, was recently
married; and the Pope's wedding present consisted of a few diamonds,
worth about £8000. Nor did this modest gift cost the nation one
baioccho. The diamonds came from the Sovereign of Turkey. Some ten
years ago the Sultan of Constantinople, the Commander of the Faithful,
presented the commander of the unfaithful with a saddle embroidered
with precious stones. The travellers in the restoring line, who used
to flock to Gaeta and Portici, carried off a great number of them in
their bags; what they left are in the casket of the young Countess
Ferretti.
The character of this respectable old man, is made up of devotion,
simplicity, vanity, weakness, and obstinacy, with an occasional touch
of rancour. He blesses with unction, and pardons with difficulty; he
is a good priest, and an insufficient king.
His intellect, which has raised such great hopes, and caused such
cruel disappointment, is of a very ordinary capacity. I can hardly
think he is infallible in temporal matters. His education is that of
the average of cardinals in general. He talks French pretty well.
The Romans formed an exaggerated opinion of him at his accession, and
have done so ever since. In 1847, when he honestly manifested a desire
to do good, they called him a great man, whereas in point of fact he
was simply a worthy man who wished to act better than his predecessors
had done, and thereby to win some applause from Europe. In 1859, he
passes for a violent re-actionist, because events have discouraged his
good intentions: and above all, because Cardinal Antonelli, who
masters him by fear, violently draws him backwards. I consider him as
meriting neither past admiration nor present hatred. I pity him for
having loosened the rein upon his people, without possessing the
firmness requisite to restrain them seasonably. I pity still more that
infirmity of character which now allows more evil to be done in his
name than he has ever himself done good.
The failure of all his enterprises, and three or four accidents which
happened in his presence, have given rise to the popular belief that
the Vicar of Jesus Christ is what the Italians call _jettatore_--in
other words, that he has the _evil eye_. When he drives along the
Corso, the old women fall down on their knees, but they snap their
fingers at him beneath their cloaks.
The members of the Italian secret societies impute to him--though for
other reasons--all the evils which afflict their country. It is
evident that the Italian question would be greatly simplified, if
there were no Pope at Rome; but the hatred of the Mazzinists against
Pius IX. is to be condemned in all its personal aspects. They would
kill him to a certainty, if our troops were not there to defend him.
This murder would be as unjust as that of Louis XVI., and as useless.
The guillotine would deprive a good old man of his life, but it would
not put an end to the bad principle of sacerdotal monarchy.
I did not seek an audience of Pius IX.; I neither kissed his hand nor
his slipper; the only mark of attention I received from him was a few
lines of insult in the _Giornale di Roma_. Still, I never can hear him
accused without defending him.
Let my readers for a moment put themselves in the place of this too
illustrious and too unfortunate old man. After having been for nearly
two years the favourite of public opinion, and the _lion_ of Europe,
he found himself obliged to quit the Quirinal palace at a moment's
notice. At Gaeta and Portici he tasted those lingering hours which
sour the spirit of the exile. A grand and time-honoured principle, of
which the legitimacy is not doubtful to him, was violated in his
person. His advisers unanimously said to him:
"It is your own fault. You have endangered the monarchy by
your ideas of progress. The immobility of governments is the
_sine quâ non_ of the stability of thrones. You will not
doubt this, if you read again the history of your
predecessors."
He had had time to become converted to this belief, when the armies of
the Catholic powers once more opened for him the road to Rome.
Overjoyed at seeing the principle saved, he vowed to himself never
again to compromise it, but to reign without progress, according to
papal tradition. But these very foreign powers who had saved his
crown, were the first to impose on him the condition of advancing!
What was to be done? He was equally afraid to promise everything, and
to refuse everything. After a long hesitation, he promised in spite of
himself; then he absolved himself, for the sake of the future, from
the engagements he had made for the sake of the present.
Now he is out of humour with his people, with the French, and with
himself. He knows the nation is suffering, but he allows himself to be
persuaded that the misfortunes of the nation are indispensable to the
safety of the Church. Those about him take care that the reproaches of
his conscience shall be stifled by the recollections of 1848 and the
dread of a new revolution. He stops his eyes and his ears, and
prepares to die calmly between his furious subjects on one hand, and
his dissatisfied protectors on the other. Any man wanting in energy,
placed as he is, would behave exactly in the same manner. The fault is
not his, it is that of weakness and old-age.
But I do not undertake to obtain the acquittal of his Minister of
State, Cardinal Antonelli.