Penitentiaries, stands the Palazzo Serristori, memorable in the
revolutionary movement of 1867. It was then the barracks of the Papal
Zouaves--the brave foreign legion enlisted under Pius the Ninth, in
which men of all nations were enrolled under officers of the best blood
in Europe, hated more especially by the revolutionaries because they
were foreigners, and because their existence, therefore, showed a
foreign sympathy with the temporal power, which was a denial of the
revolutionary theory which asserted the Papacy to be without friends in
Europe. Wholesale murder by explosives was in its infancy then as a fine
art; but the spirit was willing, and a plot was formed to blow up the
castle of Sant' Angelo and the barracks of the Zouaves. The castle
escaped because one of the conspirators lost heart and revealed the
treachery; but the Palazzo Serristori was partially destroyed. The
explosion shattered one corner of the building. It was said that the
fuse burned faster than had been intended, so that the catastrophe came
too soon. At all events, when it happened, about dark, only the
musicians of the band were destroyed, and few of the regiment were in
the building at all, so that about thirty lives were sacrificed, where
the intention had been to destroy many hundreds. In the more sane
condition of Europe today, it seems to us amazing that Pius the Ninth
should have been generally blamed for signing the death warrant of the
two atrocious villains who did the deed, and for allowing them to be
executed. The fact that he was blamed, and very bitterly, gives some
idea of the stupid and senseless prejudice against the popes which was
the result of Antonelli's narrow and reactionary policy.
[Illustration]
LEO THE THIRTEENTH
We commonly speak of the nineteenth century as an age of superior
civilization. The truth of the assertion depends on what civilization
means, but there is no denying that more blood has been shed by
civilized nations during the last one hundred and twenty years than in
any equal period of the world's history. Anyone may realize the fact by
simply recalling the great wars which have devastated the world since
the American Revolution.
But the carnage was not uninterrupted. The record of death is divided in
the midst by the thirty years of comparative peace which followed the
battle of Waterloo and preceded the general revolution of 1848. Napoleon
had harried the world, from Moscow to Cairo, from Vienna to Madrid,
pouring blood upon blood, draining the world's veins dry, exhausting
the destroying power of mankind in perpetual destruction. When he was
gone, Europe was utterly worn out by his terrible energy, and collapsed
suddenly in a state of universal nervous prostration. Then came the long
peace, from 1815 to 1848.
During that time the European nations, excepting England, were governed
by more or less weak and timid sovereigns, and it was under their feeble
rule that the great republican idea took root and grew, like a cutting
from the stricken tree of the French Revolution, planted in the heart of
Europe, nurtured in secret, and tended by devoted hands to a new
maturity, but destined to ruin in the end, as surely as the parent
stock.
Those thirty and odd years were a sort of dull season in Europe--an
extraordinarily uneventful period, during which the republican idea was
growing, and during which the monarchic idea was decaying. Halfway
through that time--about 1830--Joseph Mazzini founded the Society of
Young Italy, in connection with the other secret societies of Europe,
and acquired that enormous influence which even now is associated with
his name. Mazzini and Garibaldi meant to make a republic of Italy. The
House of Savoy did not at that time dream of a united Italian Kingdom.
The most they dared hope was the acquisition of territory on the north
by the expulsion of the Austrians. England and circumstances helped the
Savoy family in their sudden and astonishing rise of fortune; for at
that time Austria was the great military nation of Europe, while France
was the naval power second to England, and through the Bourbons, Italy
was largely under the influence of Austria. England saw that the
creation of an independent friendly power in the Mediterranean would
both tend to diminish Austria's strength by land, and would check France
in her continued efforts to make the shores of the Mediterranean hers.
She therefore encouraged Italy in revolution, and it is generally
believed that she secretly furnished enormous sums of money, through Sir
James Hudson, minister in Turin, to further the schemes of Mazzini. The
profound hatred of Catholics which was so much more marked in England
then than now, produced a strong popular feeling there in favour of the
revolutionaries, who inveighed against all existing sovereignties in
general, but were particularly bitter against the government of the
Popes. The revolution thus supported by England, and guided by such men
as Mazzini and Garibaldi, made progress. The legendary nature of Rome,
as mistress of the world, appealed also to many Italians, and 'Rome'
became the catchword of liberty. The situation was similar in other
European countries; secret societies were as active, and to the
revolutionaries the result seemed as certain.
But the material of monarchic opposition was stronger elsewhere than in
Italy. Prussia had Hohenzollerns and Austria had Hapsburgs--races that
had held their own and reigned successfully for hundreds of years. The
smaller German principalities had traditions of conservative obedience
to a prince, which were not easily broken. On the other hand, in Italy
the government of the Bourbons and their relatives was a barbarous
misrule, of which the only good point was that it did not oppress the
people with taxes, and in Rome the Pontifical chair had been occupied by
a succession of politically insignificant Popes from Pius the Seventh,
Napoleon's victim, to Gregory the Sixteenth. There was no force in Italy
to oppose the general revolutionary idea, except the conservatism of
individuals, in a country which has always been revolutionary. Much the
same was true of France. But in both countries there were would-be
monarchs waiting in the background, ready to promote any change whereby
they might profit--Louis Napoleon, and the Kings of Sardinia, Charles
Albert first, and after his defeat by the Austrians and his abdication,
the semi-heroic, semi-legendary Victor Emmanuel.
Gregory the Sixteenth died in 1846, and Pius the Ninth was elected in
his stead--a man still young, full of the highest ideals and of most
honest purpose; enthusiastic, a man who had begun life in military
service and was destined to end it in captivity, and upon whom it was
easy to impose in every way, since he was politically too credulous for
any age, and too diffident, if not too timid, for the age in which he
lived. His private virtues made him a model to the Christian world,
while his political weakness made him the sport of his enemies. The only
stable thing in him was his goodness; everything else was in perpetual
vacillation. In every true account of every political action of Pius the
Ninth, the first words are, 'the Pope hesitated.' And he hesitated to
the last--he hesitated through a pontificate of thirty-two years, he
outreigned the 'years of Peter,' and he lost the temporal power.
The great movement came to a head in 1848. A year of revolutions, riots,
rebellions and new constitutions. So perfectly had it been organized
that it broke out almost simultaneously all over Europe--in France,
Italy, Prussia and Austria. Just when the revolution was rife Pius the
Ninth proclaimed an amnesty. That was soon after his election, and he
vacillated into a sort of passive approval of the Young Italian party.
It was even proposed that Italy should become a confederation of free
states under the presidency of the Pope. No man in his senses believed
in such a possibility, but at that time an unusual number of people were
not in their senses; Europe had gone mad.
Everyone knows the history of that year, when one Emperor, several
Kings, and numerous princes and ministers scattered in all directions,
like men running away from a fire that is just going to reach a quantity
of explosives. The fire was the reaction after long inactivity. Pius the
Ninth fled like the rest, when his favourite minister, Count Rossi, had
been stabbed to death on the steps of the Cancelleria. Some of the
sovereigns got safely back to their thrones. The Pope was helped back by
France and kept on his throne, first by the Republic, and then, with one
short intermission, by Louis Napoleon. In 1870, the French needed all
their strength for their own battles, and gave up fighting those of the
Vatican.
During that long period, from 1849 to 1870, Pius the Ninth governed Rome
in comparative security, in spite of occasional revolutionary outbreaks,
and in kindness if not in wisdom. Taxation was insignificant. Work was
plentiful and well paid, considering the country and the times.
Charities were enormous. The only restriction on liberty was political,
never civil. Reforms and improvements of every kind were introduced.
When Gregory the Sixteenth died, Rome was practically a mediaeval city;
when the Italians took it, twenty-four years later, it was a fairly
creditable modern capital. The government of Pius the Ninth was
paternal, and if he was not a wise father, he was at all events the
kindest of men. The same cannot be said of Cardinal Antonelli, his prime
minister, who was the best hated man of his day, not only in Europe and
Italy, but by a large proportion of Churchmen. He was one of those
strong and unscrupulous men who appeared everywhere in Europe as
reactionaries in opposition to the great revolution. On a smaller
scale--perhaps because he represented a much smaller power--he is to be
classed with Disraeli, Metternich, Cavour and Bismarck. In palliation of
many of his doings, it should be remembered that he was not a priest;
for the Cardinalate is a dignity not necessarily associated with the
priesthood, and Antonelli was never ordained. He was a fighter and a
schemer by nature, and he schemed and fought all his life for the
preservation of the temporal power in Rome. He failed, and lived to see
his defeat, and he remained till his death immured in the Vatican with
Pius the Ninth. He used to live in a small and almost mean apartment,
opening upon the grand staircase that leads up from the court of Saint
Damasus.
When the Italians entered Rome through the breach at the Porta Pia,
Italy was unified. It is a curious fact that Italy was never at any time
unified except by force. The difference between the unification under
Julius Caesar and Augustus, and the unification under Victor Emmanuel, is
very simple. Under the first Caesars, Rome conquered the Italians; under
the House of Savoy, the Italians conquered Rome.
The taking of Rome in 1870 was the deathblow of mediaevalism; and the
passing away of King Victor Emmanuel and of Pope Pius the Ninth was the
end of romantic Italy, if one may use the expression to designate the
character of the country through all that chain of big and little events
which make up the thrilling story of the struggle for Italian unity.
After the struggle for unity, began the struggle for life--more
desperate, more dangerous, but immeasurably less romantic. There is all
the difference between the two which lies between unsound banking and
perilous fighting. The long Pontificate of Pius the Ninth came to a
close almost simultaneously with the reign and the life of Victor
Emmanuel, first King of United Italy, after the Pope and the King had
faced each other during nearly a third of the century, two political
enemies of whom neither felt the slightest personal rancour against the
other. On his death-bed, the King earnestly desired the Pope's parting
blessing, but although the Pope gave it, the message arrived too late,
for the old King was dead. Little more than a month later, Pius the
Ninth departed this life. That was the end of the old era.
The disposition of Europe in the year 1878, when Leo the Thirteenth was
crowned, was strongly anti-Catholic. England had reached the height of
her power and influence, and represented to the world the
scientific-practical idea in its most successful form. She was then
traversing that intellectual phase of so-called scientific atheism of
which Huxley and Herbert Spencer were the chief teachers. Their view
seems not to have been so hostile to the Catholic Church in particular
as it was distinctly antagonistic to all religion whatsoever. People
were inclined to believe that all creeds were a thing of the past, and
that a scientific millennium was at hand. No one who lived in those days
can forget the weary air of pity with which the Huxleyites and the
Spencerians spoke of all humanity's beliefs. England's enormous
political power somehow lent weight to the anti-religious theories of
those two leading men of science, which never really had the slightest
hold upon the believing English people. Italians, for instance, readily
asserted that England had attained her position among nations by the
practice of scientific atheism, and classed Darwin the discoverer with
Spencer the destroyer; for all Latins are more or less born
Anglomaniacs, and naturally envy and imitate Anglo-Saxon character, even
while finding fault with them, just as we envy and imitate Latin art and
fashions. Under a German dynasty and a Prime Minister of Israelitish
name and extraction, the English had become the ideal after which half
of Europe hankered in vain. England's influence was then distinctly
anti-Catholic.
Germany, fresh in unity, and still quivering with the long-forgotten
delight of conquest, was also, as an Empire, anti-Catholic, and the
Kultur Kampf, which was really a religious struggle, was at its height.
Germany's religions are official at the one extreme and popular at the
other; but there is no intermediate religion to speak of--and what we
should call cultured people, scientific men, the professorial class, are
largely atheistic.
For some time after the proclamation of the Empire, Germany meant
Prussia to the rest of the world--Prussia officially evangelical,
privately sceptical, the rigid backbone of the whole German military
mammoth. The fact that about one-third of the population of the Empire
is Catholic was overlooked by Prussia and forgotten by Europe.
France--Catholic in the provinces--was Paris just then--republican
Paris. And all French Republics have been anti-Catholic, as all French
monarchies have been the natural allies of the Vatican, as institutions,
though individual Kings, like Francis the First, have opposed the Popes
from time to time. France, in 1878, was recovering with astonishing
vitality from her defeat, but the new growth was unlike the old. The
definite destruction of the old France had taken place in 1870; and the
new France bore little resemblance to the old. It was, as it is now,
Catholic, but anti-papal.
The smaller northern powers, Scandinavia and Holland, were anti-Catholic
of course. Russia has always been the natural enemy of the Catholic
Church. Of the remaining European nations, only Austria could be said to
have any political importance, and even she was terrorized by the new
German Empire.
Italy had been the scene of one of those quick comedies of national
self-transformation which start trains of consequences rather than
produce immediately great results. One may call it a comedy, not in a
depreciating sense, but because the piece was played out to a successful
issue with little bloodshed and small hindrance. It had been laid down
as a principle by the playwrights that the Vatican was the natural enemy
of Italian unity; and the playwrights and principal actors, Cavour,
Garibaldi and others, were all atheists. The new Italy of their creation
was, therefore, an anti-Catholic power, while the whole Italian people,
below the artificial scientific level, were, as they are now,
profoundly, and even superstitiously, religious. That was the state of
the European world when Leo the Thirteenth was elected.
[Illustration: POPE LEO XIII.
From the Portrait by Lenbach]
The Popes have always occupied an exceptional position as compared with
other sovereigns. There is not, indeed, in the history of any nation or
community any record of an office so anomalous. To all intents and
purposes Christianity is a form of socialism, the Church is a democracy,
and the government of the Popes has been despotic, in the proper
sense,--that is, it has been one of 'absolute authority.' It is probably
not necessary to say anything about the first statement, which few, I
fancy, will be inclined to deny. Pure socialism means community of
property, community of social responsibility, and community of
principles. As regards the democratic rules by which the Church governs
itself, there cannot be two ways of looking at them. Peasant and prince
have an equal chance of wearing the triple crown; but in history it will
be found that it has been more often worn by peasants than by princes,
and most often by men issuing from the middle classes. Broadly, the
requirements have always been those answered by personal merit rather
than by any other consideration. The exceptions have perhaps been many,
and the abuses not a few, but the general principle cannot be denied,
and the present Pope came to the supreme ecclesiastical dignity by much
the same steps as the majority of his predecessors. Since his elevation
to the pontificate the Pecci family have established, beyond a doubt,
their connection with the noble race of that name, long prominent in
Siena, and having an ancient and historical right to bear arms and the
title of count--a dignity of uncertain value in Italy, south of the
Tuscan border, but well worth having when it has originated in the
northern part of the country.
Joachim Vincent Pecci, since 1878 Pope, under the name of Leo the
Thirteenth, was born at Carpineto, in the Volscian hills, in 1810. His
father had served in the Napoleonic wars, but had already retired to his
native village, where he was at that time a landed proprietor of
considerable importance and the father of several children. Carpineto
lies on the mountain side, in the neighbourhood of Segni, in a rocky
district, and in the midst of a country well known to Italians as the
Ciociaria. This word is derived from 'cioce,' the sandals worn by the
peasants in that part of the country, in the place of shoes, and bound
by leathern thongs to the foot and leg over linen strips which serve for
stockings. The sandal indeed is common enough, or was common not long
ago, in the Sabine and Samnian hills and in some parts of the Abruzzi,
but it is especially the property of the Volscians, all the way from
Montefortino, the worst den of thieves in Italy, down to the Neapolitan
frontier. Joachim Pecci was born with a plentiful supply of that rough,
bony, untiring mountaineer's energy which has made the Volscians what
they have been for good or evil since the beginning of history.
Those who have been to Carpineto have seen the dark old pile in which
the Pope was born, with its tower which tops the town, as the dwellings
of the small nobles always did in every hamlet and village throughout
the south of Europe. For the Pecci were good gentlefolk long ago, and
the portraits of Pope Leo's father and mother, in their dress of the
last century, still hang in their places in the mansion. His Holiness
strongly resembles both, for he has his father's brow and eyes, and his
mother's mouth and chin. In his youth he seems to have been a very dark
man, as clearly appears from the portrait of him painted when he was
Nuncio in Brussels at about the age of thirty-four years. The family
type is strong. One of the Pope's nieces might have sat for a portrait
of his mother. The extraordinarily clear, pale complexion is also a
family characteristic. Leo the Thirteenth's face seems cut of live
alabaster, and it is not a figure of speech to say that it appears to
emit a light of its own.
Born and bred in the keen air of the Volscian hills, he is a southern
Italian, but of the mountains, and there is still about him something of
the hill people. He has the long, lean, straight, broad-shouldered frame
of the true mountaineer, the marvellously bright eye, the eagle
features, the well-knit growth of strength, traceable even in extreme
old age; and in character there is in him the well-balanced combination
of a steady caution with an unerring, unhesitating decision, which
appears in those great moments when history will not wait for little
men's long phrases, when the pendulum world is swinging its full stroke,
and when it is either glory or death to lay strong hands upon its
weight. But when it stops for a time, and hangs motionless, the little
men gather about it, and touch it boldly, and make theories about its
next unrest.
In the matter of physique, there is, indeed, a resemblance between Leo
the Thirteenth, President Lincoln and Mr. Gladstone--long, sinewy men
all three, of a bony constitution and indomitable vitality, with large
skulls, high cheek-bones, and energetic jaws--all three men of great
physical strength, of profound capacity for study, of melancholic
disposition, and of unusual eloquence. It might almost be said that
these three men represent three distinct stages of one type--the real or
material, the intellectual and the spiritual. From earliest youth each
of the three was, by force of circumstances, turned to the direction
which he was ultimately to follow. Lincoln was thrown upon facts for his
education; Gladstone received the existing form of education in its
highest development, while the Pope was brought up under the domination
of spiritual thoughts at a time when they had but lately survived the
French Revolution. Born during the height of the conflict between belief
and unbelief, Leo the Thirteenth, by a significant fatality, was raised
to the pontificate when the Kultur Kampf was raging and the attention of
the world was riveted on the deadly struggle between the Roman Catholic
Church and Prince Bismarck--a struggle in which the great chancellor
found his equal, if not his master.
The Pope spent his childhood in the simple surroundings of Carpineto,
than which none could be simpler, as everyone knows who has ever visited
an Italian country gentleman in his home. Early hours, constant
exercise, plain food and farm interests made a strong man of him, with
plenty of simple common sense. As a boy he was a great walker and
climber, and it is said that he was excessively fond of birding, the
only form of sport afforded by that part of Italy, and practised there
in those times, as it is now, not only with guns, but by means of nets.
It has often been said that poets and lovers of freedom come more
frequently from the mountains and the seashore than from a flat inland
region. Leo the Thirteenth ranks high among the scholarly poets of our
day, and is certainly conspicuous for the liberality of his views. As
long as he was in Perugia, it is well known that he received the
officers of the Italian garrison and any government officials of rank
who chanced to be present in the city, not merely now and then, or in a
formal way, but constantly and with a cordiality which showed how much
he appreciated their conversation. It may be doubted whether in our
country an acknowledged leader of a political minority would either
choose or dare to associate openly with persons having an official
capacity on the other side.
But the stiff mannerism of the patriarchal system which survived until
recently from the early Roman times gave him that formal tone and
authoritative manner which are so characteristic of his conversation in
private. His deliberate but unhesitating speech makes one think of
Goethe's 'without haste, without rest.' Yet his formality is not of the
slow and circumlocutory sort; on the contrary, it is energetically
precise, and helps rather than mars the sound casting of each idea. The
formality of strong people belongs to them naturally, and is the
expression of a certain unchanging persistence; that of the weak is
mostly assumed for the sake of magnifying the little strength they have.