TOLERANCE.
If crimes against Heaven are those which the Church forgives the
least, every man who is not even nominally a Catholic, is of course in
the eyes of the Pope a rogue and a half.
These criminals are very numerous: the geographer Balbi enumerates
some six hundred millions of them on the surface of the globe. The
Pope continues to damn them all conformably with the tradition of the
Church; but he has given up levying armies to make war upon them here
below.
Things are improved when we daily find the Head of the Roman Catholic
Church in friendly intercourse with the foes of his religion. He
partakes of the liberality of a Mussulman Prince; he receives a
schismatic Empress as a loving father; he converses familiarly with a
Queen who has abjured Catholicism to marry a Protestant; he receives
with distinction the aristocracy of the New Jerusalem; he sends his
Majordomo to attend upon a young heretic prince[11] travelling
_incognito_. I hardly know whether Gregory VII. would approve this
tolerance; nor can I tell how it is judged in the other world by the
instigators of the Crusades, or by the advisers of the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew. For my own part, I should award it unbounded praise, if I
could believe it took its source in a spirit of enlightenment and
Christian charity. I should regard it differently, if I thought it was
to be traced to calculations of policy and interest.
The difficulty is to penetrate the secret thoughts of the Sovereign
Pontiff; to find a key to the real motive of his tolerance. Natural
mildness and interested mildness resemble each other in their effects,
but differ widely in their causes. When the Pope and the Cardinals
overwhelm M. de Rothschild with assurances of their highest
consideration, are we to conclude that an Israelite is equal to a
Roman Catholic in their eyes, as he is in yours or mine? Or are we to
conclude that they deem it expedient to mask their real sentiments
because M. de Rothschild has millions to spare?
This delicate problem is not difficult to solve. We have but to seek
out a Jew in Rome who is _not_ the possessor of millions, and to ask
him how he is considered and treated by the Popes. If the Government
really make no difference between this citizen who is a Jew, and
another who is a Catholic, I will say the Popes have become tolerant
in earnest. If, on the contrary, we find that the administration
accords this poor Jew a social position somewhere between man and the
dog, then I am bound to set down the fine speeches made to M. de
Rothschild, as proceeding from calculations of interest, and as
inferring a sacrifice of dignity.
Now mark, and judge for yourselves. There were Jews in Italy before
there were Christians in the world. Roman polytheism, which tolerated
everything except the kicks administered by Polyeucte to the statue of
Jupiter, gave a place to the God of Israel. Afterwards came the
Christians, and they were tolerated till they conspired against the
laws. They were often confounded with the Jews, because they came from
the same corner of the East. Christianity increased by means of pious
conspiracies; enrolled slaves braved their masters, and became master
in its turn. I don't blame it for practising reprisals, and cutting
the pagans' throats; but in common justice it has killed too many
Jews.
Not at Rome. The Popes kept a specimen of the accursed race to bring
before God at the last judgment. The Scripture had warned the Jews
that they should live miserably till the consummation of time. The
Church, ever mindful of prophecy, undertook to keep them alive and
miserable. She made enclosures for them, as we do in our _Jardin des
Plantes_ for rare animals. At first they were folded in the valley of
Egeria, then they were penned in the Trastevere, and finally cribbed
in the Ghetto. In the daytime they were allowed to go about the city,
that the people might see what a dirty, degraded being a man is when
he does not happen to be a Christian; but when night came they were
put under lock and key. The Ghetto used to close just as the Faithful
were on their way to damnation at the theatre.
On the occasion of certain solemnities the Municipal Council of Rome
amused the populace with _Jew races_.
When modern philosophy had somewhat softened Catholic manners, horses
were substituted for Jews. The Senator of the city used annually to
administer to them an official kick in the seat of honour: which token
of respect they acknowledged by a payment of 800 scudi. At every
accession of a Pope, they were obliged to range themselves under the
Arch of Titus, and to offer the new Pontiff a Bible, in return for
which he addressed to them an insulting observation. They paid a
perpetual annuity of 450 scudi to the heirs of a renegade who had
abused them. They paid the salary of a preacher charged to work at
their conversion every Saturday, and if they stayed away from the
sermon they were fined. But they paid no taxes in the strict sense of
the word, because they were not citizens. The law regarded them in the
light of travellers at an inn. The license to dwell in Rome was
provisional, and for many centuries it was renewed every year. Not
only were they without any political rights, but they were deprived of
even the most elementary civil rights. They could neither possess
property, nor engage in manufactures, nor cultivate the soil: they
lived by botching and brokage. How they lived at all surprises me.
Want, filth, and the infected atmosphere of their dens, had
impoverished their blood, made them wan and haggard, and stamped
disgrace upon their looks. Some of them scarcely retained the
semblance of humanity. They might have been taken for brutes; yet they
were notoriously intelligent, apt at business, resigned to their lot,
good-tempered, kind-hearted, devoted to their families, and
irreproachable in their general conduct.
I need not add that the Roman rabble, bettering the instruction of
Catholic monks, spurned them, reviled them, and robbed them. The law
forbade Christians to hold converse with them, but to steal anything
from them was a work of grace.
The law did not absolutely sanction the murder of a Jew; but the
tribunals regarded the murderer of a man in a different light from the
murderer of a Jew. Mark the line of pleading that follows.
"Why, Gentlemen, does the law severely punish murderers, and
sometimes go the length of inflicting upon them the penalty
of death? Because he who murders a Christian murders at once
a body and a soul. He sends before the Sovereign Judge a
being who is ill-prepared, who has not received absolution,
and who falls straight into hell--or, at the very least,
into purgatory. This is why murder--I mean the murder of a
Christian--cannot be too severely punished. But as for us
(counsel and client), what have we killed? Nothing,
Gentlemen, absolutely nothing but a wretched Jew,
predestined for damnation. You know the obstinacy of his
race, and you know that if he had been allowed a hundred
years for his conversion, he would have died like a brute,
without confession. I admit that we have advanced by some
years the maturity of celestial justice; we have hastened a
little for him an eternity of torture which sooner or later
must inevitably have been his lot. But be indulgent,
Gentlemen, towards so venial an offence, and reserve your
severity for those who attempt the life and salvation of a
Christian!"
This speech would be nonsense at Paris. It was sound logic at Rome,
and, thanks to it, the murderer got off with a few months'
imprisonment.
You will ask why the Jews have not fled a hundred leagues from this
Slough of Despond. The answer is, because they were born there.
Moreover, the taxation is light, and rent is moderate. Add that, when
famine has been in the land, or the inundations of the Tiber have
spread ruin and devastation around, the scornful charity of the Popes
has flung them some bones to gnaw. Then again, travelling costs money,
and passports are not to be had for the asking in Rome.
But if, by some miracle of industry, one of these unfortunate children
of Israel has managed to accumulate a little money, his first thought
has been to place his family beyond the reach of the insults of the
Ghetto. He has realized his little fortune, and has gone to seek
liberty and consideration in some less Catholic country. This accounts
for the fact that the Ghetto was no richer at the accession of Pius
IX. than it was in the worst days of the Middle Ages.
History has made haste to write in letters of gold all the good deeds
of the reigning Pope, and, above all, the enfranchisement of the Jews.
Pius IX. has removed the gates of the Ghetto. He allows the Jews to go
about by night as well as by day, and to live where they like. He has
exempted them from the municipal kick and the 800 scudi which it cost
them. He has closed the little church where these poor people were
catechized every Saturday, against their will, and at their own
expense. His accession may be regarded, then, as an era of deliverance
for the people of Israel who have set up their tents in Rome.
Europe, which sees things from afar, naturally supposes that under so
tolerant a sway as that of Pius IX., Jews have thronged from all parts
of the world into the Papal States. But see how paradoxical a science
is that of statistics. From it we learn that in 1842, under Gregory
XVI., during the captivity of Babylon, the little kingdom of the Pope
contained 12,700 Jews. We further learn that in 1853, in the teeth of
such reforms, such a shower of benefits, such justice, and such
tolerance, the Israelites in the kingdom were reduced to 9,237. In
other words, 3,463 Jews--more than a quarter of the Jewish
population--had withdrawn from the paternal action of the Holy Father.
Either this people is very ungrateful, or we don't know the whole
state of the case.
While I was at Rome, I had secret inquiries on the subject made of two
notables of the Ghetto. When the poor people heard the object I had in
view in my inquiries, they expressed great alarm. "For Heaven's sake
don't pity us!" they cried.
"Let not the outer world learn through your book that we are
unfortunate--that the Pope shows by his acts how bitterly he
regrets the benefits conferred upon us in 1847--that the
Ghetto is closed by doors invisible, but impassable--and
that our condition is worse than ever! All you say in our
favour will turn against us, and that which you intend for
our good will do us infinite harm."
This is all the information I could obtain as to the treatment of this
persecuted people. It is little enough, but it is something. I found
that their Ghetto, in which some hidden power keeps them shut up just
as in past times, was the foulest and most neglected quarter of the
city, whence I concluded that nothing was done for them by the
municipality. I learnt that neither the Pope, nor the Cardinals, nor
the Bishops, nor the least of the Prelates, could set foot on this
accursed ground without contracting a moral stain--the custom of Rome
forbids it: and I thought of those Indian Pariahs whom a Brahmin
cannot touch without losing caste. I learnt that the lowest places in
the lowest of the public offices were inaccessible to Jews, neither
more nor less than they would be to animals. A child of Israel might
as well apply for the place of a copying-clerk at Rome as one of the
giraffes in the Jardin des Plantes for the post of a Sous-Préfet. I
ascertained that none of them are or can be landowners, a fact which
satisfies me that Pius IX. has not yet come quite to regard them as
men. If one of their tribe cultivates another man's field, it is by
smuggling himself into the occupation under a borrowed name; as though
the sweat of a Jew dishonoured the earth. Manufactures are forbidden
them, as of old; not being of the nation, they might injure the
national industry. To conclude, I have observed them myself as they
stood on the thresholds of their miserable shops, and I can assure you
they do not resemble a people freed from oppression. The seal of
pontifical reprobation is not removed from their foreheads. If, as
history pretends, they had been liberated for the last twelve years,
some sign of freedom would be perceptible on their countenances.
I am willing to admit that, at the commencement of his reign, Pius IX.
experienced a generous impulse. But this is a country in which good is
only done by immense efforts, while evil occurs naturally. I would
liken it to a waggon being drawn up a steep mountain ascent. The joint
efforts of four stout bullocks are required to drag it forward: it
runs backwards by itself.
Were I to tell you all that M. de Rothschild has done for his
co-religionists at Rome, you would be astounded. Not only are they
supported at his expense, but he never concludes a transaction with
the Pope without introducing into it a secret article or two in their
favour. And still the waggon goes backwards.
The French occupation might be beneficial to the Jews. Our officers
are not wanting in good will; but the bad will of the priests
neutralizes their efforts. By way of illustrating the operation of
these two influences, I will relate a little incident which recently
occurred.
An Israelite of Rome had hired some land in defiance of the law, under
the name of a Christian. As everybody knew that the Jew was the real
farmer, he was robbed right and left in the most unscrupulous manner,
merely because he _was_ a Jew. The poor man, foreseeing that before
rent-day he should be completely ruined, applied for leave to have a
guard sworn to protect his property. The authorities replied that
under no pretext should a Christian be sworn in the service of a
Jew. Disappointed in his application, he mentioned the fact to
some French officers, and asked for the assistance of the French
Commander-in-Chief. It was readily promised by M. de Goyon, one of the
kindest-hearted men alive, who undertook moreover to apply personally
to the Cardinal in the matter. The reply he received from his Eminence
was,
"What you ask is nothing short of an impossibility.
Nevertheless, as the Government of the Holy Father is unable
to refuse you anything, we will do it. Not only shall your
Jew have a sworn guard, but out of our affection for you, we
will select him ourselves."
Delighted at having done a good action, the General warmly thanked the
Cardinal, and departed. Three months elapsed, and still no sworn guard
made his appearance at the Jew's farm. The poor fellow, robbed more
than ever, timidly applied again to the General, who once more took
the field in his behalf. This time, in order to make the matter sure,
he would not leave the Cardinal till he held in his own hand the
permission, duly filled up and signed. The delighted Jew shed tears of
gratitude as he read to his family the thrice-blessed name of the
guard assigned to him. The name was that of a man who had disappeared
six years back, and never been heard of since.
When the French officers next met the Jew, they asked him whether he
was pleased with his sworn guard. He dared not say that he had no
guard: the police had forbidden him to complain.
The Jews of Rome are the most unfortunate in the Papal States. The
vicinity of the Vatican is as fatal to them as to the Christians. Far
from the seat of government, beyond the Apennines, they are less poor,
less oppressed, and less despised. The Israelitish population of
Ancona is really a fine race.
It is not to be inferred from this that the agents of the Pope become
converts to tolerance by crossing the Apennines.
It is not a year since the Archbishop of Bologna confiscated the boy
Mortara for the good of the Convent of the Neophytes.
Only two years ago the Prefect of Ancona revived the old law, which
forbids Christians to converse publicly with Jews.
It is not ten years since a merchant of considerable fortune, named P.
Cadova, was deprived of his wife and children by means as remarkable
as those employed in the case of young Mortara, although the affair
created less sensation at the time.
M.P. Cadova lived at Cento, in the province of Ferrara. He had a
pretty wife, and two children. His wife was seduced by one of his
clerks, who was a Catholic. The intrigue being discovered, the clerk
was driven from the house. The faithless wife soon joined her lover at
Bologna, and took her children with her.
The Jew applied to the courts of law to assist him in taking the
children from the adulteress.
The answer he received to his application was, that his wife and
children had all three embraced Christianity, and had consequently
ceased to be his family.
The Courts further decreed that he should pay an annual income for
their support.
On this income the adulterous clerk also subsists.
Some months later Monsignore Oppiszoni, Archbishop of Bologna, himself
celebrated the marriage of M.P. Cadova's wife and M.P. Cadova's
ex-clerk.
Of course, you'll say, P. Cadova was dead. Not a bit of it. He was
alive, and as well as a broken-hearted man could be. The Church, then,
winked at a case of bigamy? Not so. In the States of the Church a
woman may be married at the same time to a Jew and a Catholic, without
being a bigamist, because in the States of the Church a Jew is not a
man.