It is not deep nor very full, but, considering his great age, it is
wonderfully clear and ringing, and it has a certain incisiveness of
sound which gives it great carrying power. Pius the Ninth had as
beautiful a voice, both in compass and richness of quality, as any
baritone singer in the Sixtine choir. No one who ever heard him intone
the 'Te Deum' in Saint Peter's, in the old days, can forget the grand
tones. He was gifted in many ways--with great physical beauty, with a
rare charm of manner, and with a most witty humour; and in character he
was one of the most gentle and kind-hearted men of his day, as he was
also one of the least initiative, so to say, while endowed with the high
moral courage of boundless patience and political humility. Leo the
Thirteenth need speak but half a dozen words, with one glance of his
flashing eyes and one gesture of his noticeably long arm and
transparently thin hand, and the moral distance between his predecessor
and himself is at once apparent. There is strength still in every
movement, there is deliberate decision in every tone, there is lofty
independence in every look. Behind these there may be kindliness,
charity, and all the milder gifts of virtue; but what is apparent is a
sort of energetic, manly trenchancy which forces admiration rather than
awakens sympathy.
[Illustration: LIBRARY OF THE VATICAN]
When speaking at length on any occasion he is eloquent, but with the
eloquence of the dictator, and sometimes of the logician, rather than
that of the persuader. His enunciation is exceedingly distinct in Latin
and Italian, and also in French, a language in which he expresses
himself with ease and clearness. In Latin and Italian he chooses his
words with great care and skill, and makes use of fine distinctions, in
the Ciceronian manner, and he certainly commands a larger vocabulary
than most men.
His bearing is erect at all times, and on days when he is well his step
is quick as he moves about his private apartments. 'Il Papa corre
sempre,'--'the Pope always runs'--is often said by the guards and
familiars of the antechamber. A man who speaks slowly but moves fast is
generally one who thinks long and acts promptly--a hard hitter, as we
should familiarly say.
It is not always true that a man's character is indicated by his daily
habits, nor that his intellectual tendency is definable by the qualities
of his temper or by his personal tastes. Carlyle was one instance of the
contrary; Lincoln was another; Bismarck was a great third, with his iron
head and his delicate feminine hands. All men who direct, control or
influence the many have a right to be judged by the world according to
their main deeds, to the total exclusion of their private lives. There
are some whose public actions are better than their private ones, out of
all proportion; and there are others who try to redeem the patent sins
of their political necessities by the honest practice of their private
virtues. In some rare, high types, head, heart and hand are balanced to
one expression of power, and every deed is a mathematical function of
all three.
Leo the Thirteenth probably approaches as nearly to such superiority as
any great man now living. As a statesman, his abilities are admitted to
be of the highest order; as a scholar he is undisputedly one of the
first Latinists of our time, and one of the most accomplished writers in
Latin and Italian prose and verse; as a man, he possesses the simplicity
of character which almost always accompanies greatness, together with a
healthy sobriety of temper, habit and individual taste rarely found in
those beings whom we might call 'motors' among men. It is commonly said
that the Pope has not changed his manner of life since he was a simple
bishop. He is, indeed, a man who could not easily change either his
habits or his opinions; for he is of that enduring, melancholic,
slow-speaking, hard-thinking temperament which makes hard workers, and
in which everything tends directly to hard work as a prime object, even
with persons in whose existence necessary labour need play no part, and
far more so with those whose smallest daily tasks hew history out of
humanity in the rough state.
Of the Pope's statesmanship and Latinity the world knows much, and is
sure to hear more, while he lives--most, perhaps, hereafter, when
another and a smaller man shall sit in the great Pope's chair. For he is
a great Pope. There has not been his equal, intellectually, for a long
time, nor shall we presently see his match again. The era of
individualities is not gone by, as some pretend. Men of middle age have
seen in a lifetime Cavour, Louis Napoleon, Garibaldi, Disraeli,
Bismarck, Leo the Thirteenth--and the young Emperor of Germany. With
the possible exception of Cavour, who died, poisoned as some say, before
he had lived out his life, few will deny that of all these the present
Pope possesses, in many respects, the most evenly balanced and
stubbornly sane disposition. That fact alone speaks highly for the
judgment of the men who elected him, in Italy's half-crazed days,
immediately after the death of Victor Emmanuel.
At all events, there he stands, at the head of the Holy Roman Catholic
and Apostolic Church, as wise a leader as any who in our day has wielded
power; as skilled, in his own manner, as any who hold the pen; and
better than all that, as straightly simple and honest a Christian man as
ever fought a great battle for his faith's sake.
Straight-minded, honest and simple he is, yet keen, sensitive and nobly
cautious; for there is no nobility in him who risks a cause for the
vanity of his own courage, and who, in blind hatred of his enemies,
squanders the devotion of those who love him. In a sense, today, the
greater the man the greater the peacemaker, and Leo the Thirteenth ranks
highest among those who have helped the cause of peace in this century.
In spite of his great age, the Holy Father enjoys excellent health, and
leads a life full of occupations from morning till night. He rises very
early, and when, at about six o'clock in the morning, his valet, Pio
Centra, enters his little bedroom, he more often finds the Pope risen
than asleep. He is accustomed to sleep little--not more than four or
five hours at night, though he rests a short time after dinner. We are
told that sometimes he has been found asleep in his chair at his
writing-table at dawn, not having been to bed at all. Of late he
frequently says mass in a chapel in his private apartments, and the mass
is served by Pio Centra. On Sundays and feast-days he says it in another
chapel preceding the throne-room. The little chapel is of small
dimensions, but by opening the door into the neighbouring room a number
of persons can assist at the mass. The permission, when given, is
obtained on application to the 'Maestro di Camera,' and is generally
conceded only to distinguished foreign persons. After saying mass
himself, the Holy Father immediately hears a second one, said by one of
the private chaplains on duty for the week, whose business it is to take
care of the altar and to assist. Frequently he gives the communion with
his own hand to those who are present at his mass. After mass he
breakfasts upon coffee and goat's milk, and this milk is supplied from
goats kept in the Vatican gardens--a reminiscence of Carpineto and of
the mountaineer's early life.
Every day at about ten he receives the Secretary of State, Cardinal
Rampolla, and converses with him for a good hour or more upon current
affairs. On Tuesdays and Fridays the Secretary of State receives the
Diplomatic Corps in his own apartments, and on those days the Under
Secretary confers with the Pope in his chief's place. The acting prefect
of the 'Holy Apostolic Palaces' is received by the Pope when he has
business to expound. On the first and third Fridays of each month the
Maggiordomo is received, and so on, in order, the cardinal prefects of
the several Roman congregations, the Under Secretaries, and all others
in charge of the various offices. In the papal antechamber there is a
list of them, with the days of their audiences.
During the morning the Pope receives cardinals, bishops and ambassadors
who are going away on leave, or who have just returned, princes and
members of the Roman nobility, and distinguished foreigners. At ten
o'clock he takes a cup of broth brought by Centra. At two in the
afternoon, or a little earlier, he dines, and he is most abstemious,
although he has an excellent digestion. His private physician, Doctor
Giuseppe Lapponi, has been heard to say that he himself eats more at one
meal than the Holy Father eats in a week. Every day, unless indisposed,
some one is received in private audience. These audiences are usually
for the cardinal prefects of the congregations, the patriarchs,
archbishops and bishops who are in Rome at the time, and distinguished
personages.
When the weather is fine the Pope generally walks or drives in the
garden. He is carried out of his apartments to the gate in a
sedan-chair by the liveried 'sediarii,' or chair-porters; or if he goes
out by the small door known as that of Paul the Fifth, the carriage
awaits him, and he gets into it with the private chamberlain, who is
always a monsignore. It is as well to say here, for the benefit of
non-Catholics, that 'monsignori' are not necessarily bishops, nor even
consecrated priests, the title being really a secular one. Two Noble
Guards of the corps of fifty gentlemen known under that name ride beside
the carriage doors. The closed carriage is a simple brougham, having the
Pope's coat of arms painted on the door, but in summer he occasionally
goes out in an open landau. He drives several times round the avenues,
and when he descends, the officer of the Guards dismounts and opens the
carriage door. He generally walks in the neighbourhood of the Chinese
pavilion and along the Torrione, where the papal observatory is built.
Leo the Thirteenth is fond of variety--and no wonder, shut up for life
as he is in the Vatican; he enjoys directing work and improvements in
the gardens; he likes to talk with Vespignani, the architect of the Holy
Apostolic Palaces, who is also the head of the Catholic party in the
Roman municipality, to go over the plans of work he has ordered, to give
his opinion, and especially to see that the work itself is executed in
the shortest possible time. Time is short for a pope; Sixtus the Fifth,
who filled Rome and Italy with himself, reigned only five years;
Rodrigo Borgia eleven years; Leo the Tenth, but nine.
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF ACQUA FELICE]
In 1893 the Pope began to inhabit the new pavilion designed and built by
Vespignani in pure fifteenth-century style. It is built against the
Torrione, the ancient round tower constructed by Saint Leo the Fourth
about the year 850. In 1894 Leo the Thirteenth made a further extension,
and joined another building to the existing one by means of a loggia, on
the spot once occupied by the old barracks of the papal gendarmes, who
are still lodged in the gardens, and whose duty it is to patrol the
precincts by day and night. Indeed, the fact that two dynamiters were
caught in the garden in 1894 proves that a private police is necessary.
During the great heat of summer the Pope, after saying mass, goes into
the garden about nine in the morning and spends the whole day there,
receiving everyone in the garden pavilion he has built for himself, just
as he would receive in the Vatican. He dines there, too, and rests
afterward, guarded by the gendarmes on duty, to whom he generally sends
a measure of good wine--another survival of a country custom; and in the
cool of the day he again gets into his carriage, and often does not
return to the Vatican till after sunset, toward the hour of Ave Maria.
In the evening, about an hour later,--at 'one of the night,' according
to the old Roman computation of time,--he attends at the recitation of
the rosary, or evening prayers, by his private chaplain, and he requires
his immediate attendants to assist also. He then retires to his room,
where he reads, studies or writes verses, and at about ten o'clock he
eats a light supper.
While in the garden he is fond of talking about plants and flowers with
the director of the gardens. He walks with the officer of the Noble
Guards and with the private chamberlain on duty. He speaks freely of
current topics, tells anecdotes of his own life and visits the gazelles,
goats, deer and other animals kept in the gardens. From the cupola of
Saint Peter's the whole extent of the grounds is visible, and when the
Pope is walking, the visitors, over four hundred feet above, stop to
watch him. He has keen eyes, and sees them also. 'Let us show
ourselves!' he exclaims on such occasions. 'At least they will not be
able to say that the Pope is ill!'
The Pope's favourite poets are Virgil and Dante. He knows long passages
of both by heart, and takes pleasure in quoting them. When Father
Michael, the apostolic prefect to Erithrea, was taking his leave, with
the other Franciscans who accompanied him to Africa, his Holiness
recited to them, with great spirit, Dante's canto upon St. Francis.
The Pope reads the newspapers, passages of interest being marked for him
by readers in order to save time. He frequently writes letters to the
bishops, and composes encyclicals in a polished and Ciceronian style of
Latin. The encyclicals are printed at the private press of the Vatican,
an institution founded by him and furnished with all modern
improvements. They are first published in the 'Osservatore Romano,' the
official daily paper of the Vatican, and then finally translated into
Italian and other languages, and sent out to the bishops abroad. Leo the
Thirteenth likes to see and talk with men of letters, as well as to read
their books. Two years ago he requested Professor Brunelli of Perugia to
buy for him the poetical works of the Abbe Zanella. The request is
characteristic, for his Holiness insisted upon paying for the book, like
anyone else.
When great pilgrimages are to be organized, the first step taken is to
form committees at the place of origin. The leader of the pilgrimage is
usually the head of the diocese, who then writes to Rome to make the
arrangements. The Committee on Pilgrimages provides quarters for the
pilgrims, at the Lazaret of Saint Martha, or elsewhere, that they may be
properly lodged and fed. On the occasion of the celebrated French
workingmen's pilgrimage, the great halls in the Belvedere wing,
including the old quarters of the engineer corps, and of the artillery
and the riding-school, were opened as dining-halls, where the pilgrims
came morning and evening to their meals; the kitchen department and the
general superintendence were in charge of Sisters, and everything was
directed by the Roman Committee of Pilgrimages. The visitors were
received by the Circolo, or Society of Saint Peter's, and by the first
Artisan Workmen's Association, the members of which waited at table,
wearing aprons. The Circolo has an office for pilgrimages which
facilitates arrangements with the railways, and provides lodgings in
hotels, inns and private houses in Rome for the well-to-do; but the
General Committee on Pilgrimages provides lodgings for the poor. The
head of the pilgrimage also makes arrangements for the mass which the
Holy Father celebrates for the pilgrims, and for the audience which
follows. If the pilgrimage is large, the mass is said in Saint Peter's;
if small, in the Vatican, either in the Loggia of the Beatification or
in the Sala Ducale. At the audience the pilgrims place their offerings
in the Pope's hands, and he blesses the rosaries, crosses and other
objects of devotion, and gives small silver medals in memory of the
occasion.
Since 1870 the Pope has not conducted the solemn services either in
Saint Peter's or in the Sixtine Chapel. The only services of this kind
in which he takes part are those held in the Sixtine Chapel on the
anniversary of the death of Pius the Ninth, and on the anniversary of
his own coronation, March 3. At these two functions there are also
present the Sacred College, the bishops and prelates, the Roman
nobility, the Knights of Malta, the Diplomatic Corps in full dress, and
any foreign Catholic royal princes who may chance to be in Rome at the
time. At the 'public' consistories, held with great pomp in the Sala
Regia, the Pope gives the new hat to each new cardinal; but there are
also 'private' consistories held in the beautiful Sala del Concistoro,
near the hall of the Swiss Guards, at the entrance to the Pope's
apartments.
Moreover, the Pope appears at beatifications and canonizations, and
during the present pontificate these have been generally held in the
Hall of Beatifications, a magnificent room with a tribune, above the
portico of Saint Peter's, turned into a chapel for the occasion, with
innumerable candles and lamps, the transparency of the beatified person,
called the Gloria, and standards on which are painted representations of
miracles. The last of these ceremonies was held in Saint Peter's, with
closed doors, but in the presence of an enormous concourse, with the
greatest pomp, the whole of the Noble Guard and the Palatine Guard
turning out, and order being preserved by the Swiss Guards, the
gendarmes, and the vergers of the basilica, known as the 'Sanpietrini.'
In Holy Week, in order to meet the wants of the many eminent and devout
Catholics who then flock to Rome, the Holy Father celebrates mass two or
three times in the Sala Ducale, which is then turned into a chapel.
During these masses motetts are sung by the famous Sixtine choir, under
the direction of the old Maestro Mustafa, once the greatest soprano of
the century, but at the same time so accomplished a musician as to have
earned the common name of 'Palestrina redivivus.' It is to be regretted
that he has never allowed any of his beautiful compositions to be
published. On such occasions as Christmas Day or the feast of Saint
Joachim, by whose name the Pope was christened, he receives the College
of Cardinals, the bishops present in Rome, many prelates, the heads of
religious bodies, some officers of the old pontifical army and of the
guards, and the dignitaries of the papal court, in his own private
library, where he talks familiarly with each in turn, and quite without
ceremony. Reigning sovereigns, princes and distinguished persons are
received in the grand throne-room, where the throne is covered with red
velvet, with coats of arms at the angles of the canopy. Upon a large
pier-table, in the rococo style, between the windows and opposite the
throne, stands a great crucifix of ivory and ebony, between two
candlesticks. The carpet used at such times was presented by Spain.
Before the Emperor of Germany's visit the Pope himself gave particular
directions for the dressing of the throne and the arrangement of the
rooms.
When great personages are received their suites are also presented,
after which the Pope retires with his guest to the small private
throne-room.
Before coming to the Pope's presence it is necessary to pass through
many anterooms, the Sala Clementina, the hall of the palfrenieri and
sediarii,--that is, of the grooms and chair-porters,--the hall of the
gendarmes, the antechamber of the Palatine Guard, that of the officers
on duty, the hall of the Arras, that of the chamberlains and Noble
Guards and at last the antechamber of the Maestro di Camera--there are
eight in all. Persons received in audience are accompanied by the
'camerieri segreti,' who do the honours in full dress, wearing their
chains and carrying their staves.
The private library is a spacious room lined with bookcases made of a
yellow wood from Brazil, some of which are curtained. Busts of several
former Popes stand upon marble columns.
To the Pope's bedroom, only his private valet and his secretaries have
access. It is of small dimensions, and contains only a bed, in an
alcove adorned with graceful marble columns, a writing-table, an
arm-chair and kneeling stool, and one wardrobe.
Besides these, there is his private study, in which the table and chair
stand upon a little carpeted platform, other tables being placed on each
side upon the floor, together with an extremely uncomfortable but
magnificent straight-backed arm-chair, which is one of the gifts offered
on the occasion of the episcopal jubilee. There is, moreover, a little
room containing only a lounge and an old-fashioned easy-chair with
'wings' and nothing else. It is here that the Holy Father retires to
take his afternoon nap, and the robust nature of his nerves is proved by
the fact that he lies down with his eyes facing the broad light of the
window.
The private apartment occupies the second floor, according to Italian
reckoning, though we Americans should call it the third; it is on a
level with Raphael's loggie. The floor above it is inhabited by Cardinal
Rampolla, the Secretary of State.
The 'pontifical court,' as it is called, consists (1898) of Cardinal
Rampolla, the Secretary of State; Cardinal Mario Mocenni, the
pro-prefect of the Holy Apostolic Palaces, a personage of the highest
importance, who has sole control of everything connected with the
Vatican palace and all the vast mass of adjoining buildings; the
Maggiordomo, who, besides many other functions, is the manager of the
museums, galleries and inhabited apartments; the Maestro di Camera, who
nearly corresponds to a master of ceremonies, and superintends all
audiences; the almoner and manager of the papal charities, assisted by a
distinguished priest, who is also a lawyer, formerly secretary to the
well-known Monsignor de Merode; a monk of the Dominican order, who
supervises the issuing of books printed at the Vatican; a chief steward;
four private secretaries, who take turns of service lasting a week for
each, and are always with the Pope, and finally the chief of the Vatican
police. Moreover, his Holiness has his private preacher, who delivers
sermons before him in Advent and Lent, and his confessor, both of whom
are always Capuchin monks, in accordance with a very ancient tradition.
It must not be supposed by the uninitiated that these few persons in any
way represent the central directive administration of the Catholic
Church. On the contrary, the only one of them who is occupied in that
larger field is Cardinal Rampolla, the Secretary of State. The others
are, strictly speaking, the chief personages of the pontifical
household, as we should say. But their offices are not sinecures. The
Pope's restless energy extracts work from the men about him as one
squeezes water from a sponge. In the days of Pius the Ninth, after the
fall of the temporal power, the Vatican was overrun and overcrowded with
useless but well-paid officials, officers and functionaries great and
small, who took refuge there against the advancing wave of change. When
Leo the Thirteenth had been on the throne only a few weeks, there was
sold everywhere a comic print representing the Pope, with a huge broom,
sweeping all the useless people pell-mell down the steps of the Vatican
into the Piazza of Saint Peter's. As often happens, the caricaturist saw
the truth. In a reign that has lasted twenty years, Leo the Thirteenth
has done away with much that was useless, worthless and old-fashioned,
and much that cumbered the narrow patch of earth on which so important a
part of the world's business is transacted. He is a great simplifier of
details, and a strong leveller of obstructions, so that his successor in
the pontificate will find it a comparatively easy thing to keep the
mechanism in order in its present state.
[Illustration: THE VATICAN FROM THE PIAZZA OF SAINT PETER'S]
The strictest economy, even to the minutest details, is practised in the
Vatican. It appears certain that the accounts of the vast household have
often been inspected by the Pope, whose prime object is to prevent any
waste of money where so much is needed for the maintenance of church
institutions in all parts of the world. In the midst of outward
magnificence the papal establishment is essentially frugal, for the
splendid objects in the Pope's apartments, even to many of the articles
of furniture, are gifts received from the faithful of all nations. But
the money which pours into the Vatican from the contributions of
Catholics all over Christendom is only held in trust, to be expended in
support of missions, of poor bishoprics, and of such devout and
charitable organizations as need help, wherever they may be. That
nothing may be lost which can possibly be applied to a good purpose is
one of Leo the Thirteenth's most constant occupations. He has that
marvellous memory for little things which many great leaders and
sovereigns have had; he remembers not only faces and names, but figures
and facts, with surprising and sometimes discomfiting accuracy.