train increase of debt, of taxes, impoverishment of the State, and the
odious union of spiritual with temporal arms, which became a permanent
calamity for the Holy See. This attachment to the interest of their
families threw great discredit on the Popes, who were dishonoured by the
faults, the crimes, and the punishment of their relatives. But since the
death of Alexander VIII., in 1691, even that later form of nepotism
which aimed at wealth only, not at political power, came to an end, and
has never reappeared except in the case of the Braschi. The nepotism of
the cardinals and prelates has survived that of the Popes. If the
statute of Eugenius IV. had remained in force, the College of Cardinals
would have formed a wholesome restraint in the temporal government, and
the favouritism of the papal relations would have been prevented. But
the Popes acted with the absolute power which was in the spirit of the
monarchies of that age. When Paul IV. announced to the Sacred College
that he had stripped the house of Colonna of its possessions to enrich
his nephew, and that he was at war with Spain, they listened in silence,
and have been passive ever since. No European sovereignty enjoyed so
arbitrary an authority. Under Julius II. the towns retained considerable
privileges, and looked on their annexation to the Papal State as a
deliverance from their former oppressors. Machiavelli and Guicciardini
say that the Popes required neither to defend nor to administer their
dominions, and that the people were content in the enjoyment of their
autonomy. In the course of the sixteenth century the administration was
gradually centralised in Rome, and placed in the hands of ecclesiastics.
Before 1550 the governors were ordinarily laymen, but the towns
themselves preferred to be governed by prelates. By the close of the
century the independence of the corporations had disappeared; but the
centralisation, though complete, was not vigorous, and practically the
towns and the barons, though not free, were not oppressed.
The modern system of government in the Roman States originated with
Sixtus V. He introduced stability and regularity in the administration,
and checked the growth of nepotism, favouritism, and arbitrary power, by
the creation of permanent congregations. In connection with this measure
the prelates became the upper class of official persons in the State,
and were always expected to be men of fortune. A great burden for the
country was the increase of offices, which were created only to be sold.
No important duties and no fixed salary were attached to them, and the
incumbent had to rely on fees and extortion. In the year 1470 there were
650 places of this kind. In eighty years they had increased to 3500. The
theory was, that the money raised by the sale of places saved the people
from the imposition of new taxes. Innocent XII., in 1693, put an end to
this traffic; but it had continued so long that the ill-effects
survived.
There was a great contrast between the ecclesiastical administration,
which exhibited a dignified stability, resting on fixed rules and
ancient traditions, and the civil government, which was exposed to
continual fluctuation by the change of persons, of measures, and of
systems; for few Popes continued the plans of their predecessors. The
new Pontiff commenced his reign generally with a profound sense of the
abuses and of the discontent which prevailed before his elevation, and
naturally sought to obtain favour and improvement by opposite measures.
In the cultivation of the Roman Campagna, for instance, it was observed
that each Pope followed a different system, so that little was
accomplished. The persons were almost always changed by the new Pope, so
that great offices rarely remained long in the same hands. The Popes
themselves were seldom versed in affairs of State, and therefore
required the assistance of statesmen of long experience. In the
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, when the election was free
from outward influence, men were generally chosen who had held under one
or two Popes the highest office of state,--Gregory VII., Urban II.,
Gelasius II., Lucius II., Alexander III., Gregory VIII., Gregory IX.,
Alexander IV. But in modern times it has been the rule that the
Secretary of State should not be elected, and that the new Pope should
dismiss the heads of the administration. Clement IX. was the first who
gave up this practice, and retained almost all those who had been
employed under his predecessor.
The burdens of the State increased far beyond its resources from the aid
which the Popes gave to the Catholic Powers, especially in the Turkish
wars. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the debt amounted to
12,242,620 _scudi_, and the interest absorbed three-fourths of the whole
income. In 1655 it had risen to 48,000,000 _scudi_. The financial
administration was secret, free from the control of public accounts, and
the _Tesoriere_, being necessarily a cardinal, was irresponsible. There
was no industry in the towns; they remained for the most part small and
poor; almost all articles of common use were imported, and the country
had little to give in exchange. All the interest of the public debt went
to foreign creditors. As early as 1595 the discontent was very great,
and so many emigrated, in order to escape the heavy burdens, that
Cardinal Sacchetti said, in 1664, that the population was reduced by
one-half. In the year 1740 the president De Brosses found the Roman
Government the most defective but the mildest in Europe. Becattini, in
his panegyrical biography of Pius VI., declares that it was the worst
after that of Turkey. There were none of those limitations which in
other countries restrained the power of the monarch, no fundamental
laws, no coronation oath, no binding decrees of predecessors, no
provincial estates, no powerful corporations. But, in reality, this
unlimited absolutism was softened by custom, and by great indulgence
towards individuals.
When Consalvi adopted the French institutions, he did not understand
that an absolute government is intolerable, and must sink under the
weight of its responsibility, unless it recognises the restraint of
custom and tradition, and of subordinate, but not dependent forces. The
unity and uniformity he introduced were destructive. He restored none
of the liberties of the towns, and confided the administration to
ecclesiastics superficially acquainted with law, and without knowledge
of politics or of public economy. In the ecclesiastical States of
Germany, the civil and religious departments were separate; and it is as
wrong to say that the double position of the head must repeat itself
throughout the administration, as to say that a king, because he is the
head of the army as well as of the civil government, ought to mix the
two spheres throughout the State. It would, in reality, be perfectly
possible to separate the political and ecclesiastical authorities.
Leo XII. attempted to satisfy the _Zelanti_, the adversaries of
Consalvi, by restoring the old system. He abolished the provincial
Councils, revived the Inquisition, and subjected official honesty and
public morality to a strict espionage. Leo saw the error of Consalvi,
but mistook the remedy; and his government was the most unpopular that
had been seen for a century. Where the laity are excluded from the
higher offices, and the clergy enjoy the monopoly of them, that moral
power which modern bureaucracy derives from the corporate spirit, and
the feelings of honour which it inspires, cannot subsist. One class
becomes demoralised by its privileged position, the other by its limited
prospects and insufficient pay. Leo tried to control them by the
_congregazione di vigilanze_, which received and examined all charges
against official persons; but it was suppressed by his successor.
The famous Memorandum of the Powers, 31st May 1831, recommended the
admission of the laity to all secular offices, the restoration of the
provincial Councils, and the introduction of elective communal Councils
with the power of local government; and finally, a security against the
changes incident to an elective sovereignty. The historian Coppi, who
was charged to draw up a plan of reform in reply to these demands,
relates that the Pope and the majority of the cardinals rejected every
serious change, and were resolved to uphold the old principles, and to
concede nothing to the lay party, "because, if anything was voluntarily
conceded, there would be no right of recalling it afterwards." Two
things in particular it was determined not to grant--elective Councils
in the towns and provinces, and a lay Council of State beside the Sacred
College. In a general way, vague reforms were promised; but the promise
was not redeemed. Austria would not tolerate any liberal concessions in
Italy which were in contradiction with her own system and her own
interests; thus all Italian aspirations for reforms were concentrated in
the wish to get rid of the foreign yoke, and Austria never succeeded in
forming a party amongst the Italians favourable to her power. Yet
Gregory XVI. knew that great changes were needed. In 1843 he said:--
The civil administration requires a great reform. I was too old when
I was elected; I did not expect to live so long, and had not the
courage to begin the undertaking. For whoever begins, must accomplish
it. I have now only a few more years to live; perhaps only a few
days. After me they will choose a young Pope, whose mission it will
be to perform the act, without which it is impossible to go on.
The Austrian occupation caused the Roman Government to be identified
with the foreign supremacy, and transferred to it the hatred of the
patriots. The disaffection of the subjects of the Pope had deeper
motives. Except the clergy, that overshadows all, there are no distinct
orders in the society of the Roman State; no country nobility, no
wealthy class of peasant proprietors; nothing but the population of the
towns, and a degenerate class of patricians. These were generally
hostile to the ecclesiastical system. The offices are so distributed,
that the clergy govern, and the laity are their instruments. In the
principal departments, no amount of services or ability could raise a
layman above a certain level, beyond which younger and less competent
ecclesiastics were promoted over his head. This subordination, which led
to a regular dependence of the lay officials on the prelates, drove the
best men away from the service of the State, and disposed the rest to
long for a government which should throw open to them the higher prizes
of their career. Even the country people, who were never tainted with
the ideas of the secret societies, were not always well affected.
It is more difficult for a priest than for a layman to put aside his
private views and feelings in the administration of justice. He is the
servant and herald of grace, of forgiveness, of indulgence, and easily
forgets that in human concerns the law is inexorable, that favour to one
is often injury to many or to all, and that he has no right to place his
own will above the law. He is still more disqualified for the direction
of the police, which, in an absolute State and in troubled times, uses
its unlimited power without reference to Christian ideas, leaves
unpunished acts which are grievous sins, and punishes others which in a
religious point of view are innocent. It is hard for the people to
distinguish clearly the priestly character from the action of its bearer
in the administration of police. The same indifference to the strict
letter of the law, the same confusion between breaches of divine and of
human ordinances, led to a practice of arbitrary imprisonment, which
contrasts painfully with the natural gentleness of a priestly
government. Hundreds of persons were cast into prison without a trial or
even an examination; only on suspicion, and kept there more than a year
for greater security.
The immunities of the clergy were as unpopular as their power. The laws
and decrees of the Pope as a temporal sovereign were not held to be
binding on them unless it was expressly said, or was clear from the
context, that they were given also in his character of Head of the
Church. Ecclesiastics were tried before their own tribunals, and had the
right to be more lightly punished than laymen for the same delinquency.
Those events in the life of Achilli, which came out at his trial, had
not only brought down on him no severe punishment, but did not stand in
the way of his promotion. With all these privileges, the bulk of the
Roman clergy had little to do; little was expected of them, and their
instruction was extremely deficient.
At the end of the pontificate of Gregory XVI. the demand for reforms was
loud and universal, and men began to perceive that the defects of the
civil government were undermining the religious attachment of the
people. The conclave which raised Pius IX. to the Papal throne was the
shortest that had occurred for near three hundred years. The necessity
of choosing a Pontiff disposed to understand and to satisfy the pressing
requirements of the time, made it important to hasten matters in order
to escape the interference of Austria. It was expected that Cardinal
Gizzi or Cardinal Mastai would be elected. The latter had been pointed
out by Gregory XVI. as his fittest successor, and he made Gizzi
Secretary of State. The first measure of the new reign, the amnesty,
which, as Metternich said, threw open the doors of the house to the
professional robbers, was taken not so much as an act of policy, as
because the Pope was resolved to undo an accumulation of injustice. The
reforms which followed soon made Pius the most popular of Italian
princes, and all Catholics rejoiced that the reconciliation of the
Papacy with modern freedom was at length accomplished, and that the
shadow which had fallen on the priesthood throughout the world was
removed with the abuses in the Roman Government. The Constitution was,
perhaps, an inevitable though a fatal necessity. "The Holy Father must
fall," said his minister, "but at least he will fall with honour." The
preliminary conditions of constitutional life were wanting--habits of
self-government in the towns and provinces, security from the vexations
of the police, separation of spiritual and temporal jurisdiction. It
could not be but that the existence of an elective chamber must give to
the lay element a preponderance in the State, whilst in the
administration the contrary position was maintained. There could be no
peaceful solution of this contradiction, and it is strange that the
cardinals, who were unanimously in favour of the statute, should not
have seen that it would lead to the destruction of the privileges of the
clergy. But in the allocution of 20th April 1849, the Pope declared that
he had never intended to alter the character of his government; so that
he must have thought the old system of administration by ecclesiastics
compatible with the working of the new Constitution. At his return from
exile all his advisers were in favour of abrogating all the concessions
of the first years of his reign. Balbo and Rosmini visited him at Gaeta,
to plead for the Constitution, but they obtained nothing. Pius IX. was
persuaded that every concession would be a weapon in the hands of the
Radicals. A lay _consulta_ gave to the laity a share of the supreme
government; but the chief offices and the last decision remained, as
before, in the hands of the prelates. Municipal reforms were promised.
In general the old defects continued, and the old discontent was not
conciliated.
It is manifest that Constitutionalism, as it is ordinarily understood,
is not a system which can be applied to the States of the Church. It
could not be tolerated that a warlike faction, by refusing supplies,
should compel the Pope to go to war with a Christian nation, as they
sought to compel him to declare war against Austria in 1848. His
sovereignty must be real, not merely nominal. It makes no difference
whether he is in the power of a foreign State or of a parliamentary
majority. But real sovereignty is compatible with a participation of the
people in legislation, the autonomy of corporations, a moderate freedom
of the press, and the separation of religion and police.
Recent events would induce one to suppose that the enormous power of the
press and of public opinion, which it forms and reflects, is not
understood in Rome. In 1856 the Inquisitor at Ancona issued an edict,
threatening with the heaviest censures all who should omit to denounce
the religious or ecclesiastical faults of their neighbours, relatives,
or superiors; and in defiance of the general indignation, and of the
despondency of those who, for the sake of religion, desired reforms in
the States of the Church, the _Civilta Cattolica_ declared that the
Inquisitor had done his duty. Such cases as this, and those of Achilli
and Mortara, weighed more heavily in the scale in which the Roman State
is weighed than a lost battle. Without discussing the cases themselves,
it is clear what their influence has been on public opinion, with which
it is more important at the present day to treat than with the
governments which depend on it. This branch of diplomacy has been
unfortunately neglected, and hence the Roman Government cannot rely on
lay support.
After describing the evils and disorders of the State, which the Pope so
deeply felt that he put his own existence in peril, and inflamed half of
Europe with the spirit of radical change in the attempt to remove them,
Dr. Doellinger contrasts, with the gloomy picture of decay and failure,
the character of the Pontiff who attempted the great work of reform.
Nevertheless, the administration of Pius IX. is wise, benevolent,
indulgent, thrifty, attentive to useful institutions and
improvements. All that proceeds from Pius IX. personally is worthy of
a head of the Church--elevated, liberal in the best sense of the
term. No sovereign spends less on his court and his own private
wants. If all thought and acted as he does, his would be a model
State. Both the French and the English envoys affirm that the
financial administration had improved, that the value of the land was
increasing, agriculture flourishing, and that many symptoms of
progress might be observed. Whatever can be expected of a monarch
full of affection for his people, and seeking his sole recreation in
works of beneficence, Pius richly performs. _Pertransiit
benefaciendo_,--words used of one far greater,--are simply the truth
applied to him. In him we can clearly perceive how the Papacy, even
as a temporal state, might, so far as the character of the prince is
concerned, through judicious elections, be the most admirable of
human institutions. A man in the prime of life, after an
irreproachable youth and a conscientious discharge of Episcopal
duties, is elevated to the highest dignity and to sovereign power. He
knows nothing of expensive amusements; he has no other passion but
that of doing good, no other ambition but to be beloved by his
subjects. His day is divided between prayer and the labours of
government; his relaxation is a walk in the garden, a visit to a
church, a prison, or a charitable institution. Free from personal
desires and from terrestrial bonds, he has no relatives, no
favourites to provide for. For him the rights and powers of his
office exist only for the sake of its duties.... Grievously outraged,
injured, rewarded with ingratitude, he has never harboured a thought
of revenge, never committed an act of severity, but ever forgiven and
ever pardoned. The cup of sweetness and of bitterness, the cup of
human favour and of human aversion, he has not only tasted, but
emptied to the dregs; he heard them cry "Hosannah!" and soon after
"Crucifige!" The man of his confidence, the first intellectual power
of his nation, fell beneath the murderer's knife; the bullet of an
insurgent struck down the friend by his side. And yet no feeling of
hatred, no breath of anger could ever obscure, even for a moment, the
spotless mirror of his soul. Untouched by human folly, unmoved by
human malice, he proceeds with a firm and regular step on his way,
like the stars of heaven.
Such I have seen the action of this Pope in Rome, such it has been
described to me by all, whether near him or afar; and if he now seems
to be appointed to pass through all the painful and discouraging
experience which can befall a monarch, and to continue to the end the
course of a prolonged martyrdom, he resembles in this, as in so many
other things, the sixteenth Louis; or rather; to go up higher, he
knows that the disciple is not above the Master, and that the pastor
of a church, whose Lord and Founder died upon the cross, cannot
wonder and cannot refuse that the cross should be laid also upon him
(pp. 624-627).
It is a common opinion, that the Pope, as a sovereign, is bound by the
common law to the forms and ideas of the Middle Ages; and that in
consequence of the progress of society, of the difference between the
thirteenth century and the nineteenth, there is an irreconcilable
discord between the Papacy and the necessities of civil government. All
Catholics are bound to oppose this opinion. Only that which is of Divine
institution is unchangeable through all time. But the sovereignty of the
Popes is extremely elastic, and has already gone through many forms. No
contrast can be stronger than that between the use which the Popes made
of their power in the thirteenth or the fifteenth century, and the
system of Consalvi. There is no reason, therefore, to doubt, that it
will now, after a violent interruption, assume the form best adapted to
the character of the age and the requirements of the Italian people.
There is nothing chimerical in the vision of a new order of things, in
which the election shall fall on men in the prime of their years and
their strength; in which the people shall be reconciled to their
government by free institutions and a share in the conduct of their own
concerns, and the upper classes satisfied by the opening of a suitable
career in public affairs. Justice publicly and speedily administered
would obtain the confidence of the people; the public service would be
sustained by an honourable _esprit de corps_; the chasm between laity
and priesthood would be closed by equality in rights and duties; the
police would not rely on the help of religion, and religion would no
longer drag itself along on the crutches of the police. The integrity of
the Papal States would be under the joint guardianship of the Powers,
who have guaranteed even the dominions of the Sultan; and the Pope would
have no enemies to fear, and his subjects would be delivered from the
burden of military service and of a military budget.
Religious liberty is not, as the enemies of the Holy See declare, and
some even of its friends believe, an insurmountable difficulty. Events
often cut the knots which appear insoluble to theory. Attempts at
proselytising have not hitherto succeeded among the subjects of the
Pope; but if it had been otherwise, would it have been possible for the
Inquisition to proceed against a Protestant? The agitation that must
have ensued would be a welcome opportunity to put an end to what remains
of the temporal power. It is true that the advance of Protestantism in
Italy would raise up a barrier between the Pope and his subjects; but no
such danger is to be apprehended. At the time when the doctrines of the
Reformation exercised an almost magical power over mankind, they never
took root in Italy beyond a few men of letters; and now that their power
of attraction and expansion has long been exhausted, neither Sardinian
policy nor English gold will succeed in seducing the Italians to them.
The present position of helpless and humiliating dependence will not
long endure. The determination of the Piedmontese Government to annex
Rome is not more certain than the determination of the Emperor Napoleon
to abrogate the temporal power. Pius IX. would enjoy greater security in
Turkey than in the hands of a State which combines the tyranny of the
Convention, the impudent sophistry of a government of advocates, and the
ruthless brutality of military despotism. Rather than trust to Piedmont,
may Pius IX. remember the example of his greatest predecessors, who,
relying on the spiritual might of the Papacy, sought beyond the Alps the
freedom which Italy denied to them. The Papacy has beheld the rise and
the destruction of many thrones, and will assuredly outlive the kingdom
of Italy, and other monarchies besides. It can afford to wait; _patiens
quia aeternus_. The Romans need the Pope more than the Pope needs Rome.
Above the Catacombs, among the Basilicas, beside the Vatican, there is
no place for a tribune or for a king. We shall see what was seen in the
fourteenth century: envoys will come from Rome to entreat the Pope to
return to his faithful city.