So despite the slow black cigar, the ubiquitous _farmacia_ and
_pasticceria_, despite the pervasive petrifaction of past glory, I feel
that a vigorous breeze of young thought moves through Italy, and that
Mazzini is not entirely swallowed up in the belly of the Great Horse.
“_Il nullismo_” was an Asti election-poster’s shrewd summary of the
programme of the Clerical Moderates, “_lo star quieti—forma ipocrita di
reazione_.” If Italy escapes the reaction involved in standing still, we
may yet see a Third Risorgimento that will resurrect Mazzini. Even a
Republican Congress has met freely, if with closed doors.
The popular Italian newspapers, like the windows of the bookshops, are
far more intellectual than our own, and there is a healthy readiness to
try social experiments under the popular referendum. If the
nationalisation of the railways does not yet pay, on account of the
multiplicity of officials, it has at least provided a more punctual
service than of yore, and the third-class passenger is treated as a
human being. A Jew as Premier and another as Syndic of Rome constitute
an _amende honorable_ for the Italy which established the Ghetto and,
cramping a prolific race, produced in Venice the first specimen of the
American sky-scraper. Capital punishment is abolished—the apostle,
Beccaria, duly petrified at Milan—and despite the legend of the
stiletto and the vendetta nobody demands its restoration. Phlebotomy
prevails alarmingly, through the habit of using a knife as if it were
the mere point of the fist, but it is a peaceable and polite people. The
_niente_ with which the veriest vagabond deprecates your thanks, the
_prego_ of the courtlier defence against gratitude, are the outer and
audible sign of an inner gentleness. Irritatingly vague as regards time
and space and money, a foe to definite agreements, a lover of the
horizon and the _buona mano_, running restaurants with unpriced menus,
and shops with unmarked goods, the Italian has always the saving grace
of respect for things of the mind. Who ever saw a picture of Tennyson
labelled—like the photographs of Carducci—“Mighty Master, Sublime
Poet, Refulgent National Glory!” There are moods in which I could
applaud even the stones.
But it is the revolt against Rome which stirs most furiously the
_intelligenza_ of Italy—as of all the Latin world. While in England the
fight against Christianity is confined to a few guerilla papers in low
esteem, in Italy it is a pitched battle. And the modern Anti-Pope is far
more formidable to the Vatican than the mediæval, being a rival idea,
not a rival man. The Vatican handicaps itself superfluously by sneering
at the Risorgimento—though I am told its haughty refusal to recognise
the Unity of Italy brings in shekels from Mexico, Colombia, and other
strongholds of the spirit. Instead of joining in the recent Garibaldi
jubilation, it asked through its organ whether the prosperity of the
South had not been sacrificed to the interests of the North. And so far
from making concessions to Modernism, it is sitting tighter than ever,
issuing lamentable Syllabuses and Encyclicals, accumulating lists of
suspects. It censured Minocchi for allegorising the first three chapters
of Genesis, and excommunicated Murri for saying the Pope ought not to
play at politics. The freethinkers complain uneasily of its
aggressiveness, lamenting—with unconscious humour—that it makes
propaganda! The army itself—ay, even the old Garibaldians—are not safe
from its guiles! As if the Congregation of the Propaganda were of
to-day!
But the confiscation of monasteries and churches to military and civil
uses—to barracks, agricultural colleges, gymnasia, hospitals,
what-not—the transformation of elaborate historic shrines into State
Monuments, are indications of the ground lost to the Church in its own
peculiar land. Strange was it to see squads of half-nude lads at
gymnastics in the old Renaissance church of St. Mary Magdalen at Pesaro.
Still more surprising to see a carpenter sawing away in the lofty,
well-preserved Church of the Jesuits in Pavia, his wood stacked in the
forsaken frescoed chapels, as in a strange return of Christendom to its
origins, or an illustration of the new _Logion_, “Cleave the wood and ye
shall find me.” I bought coal at a still more decayed church, taking off
my hat involuntarily.
The journalism of the street-nomenclature keeps pace with the progress
of anti-Clericalism. “Sons of an age which you foresaw,” the epitaph on
Giordano Bruno’s tomb assures that victim of the Inquisition, and many a
Via or Piazza Giordano Bruno in places apparently remote from the
currents of thought—Pesaro, Perugia, Foligno, Urbino on its isolated
rock—testifies that even a tombstone may speak the truth, provided that
it is only posthumous enough. Urbino, indeed, lonely rugged Urbino, is
compelled to put up in the Church of S. Francesco the significant
warning: “The law punishes disturbers of religious functions.” And even
more illuminating than the Giordano Bruno streets or the Giordano Bruno
societies is the mushroom rapidity with which streets of Francesco
Ferrer have sprung up all over Italy. Florence, with biting sarcasm, has
made its Via Francesco Ferrer out of its Archbishop Street. Tiny San
Gimignano of the many towers has inserted a tablet to Ferrer in the wall
of an open loggia of a theatre, “in order that Thought should be
fruitful and survive Death.” . . . “Victim,” it cries, “of the
sacerdotal tyranny, inaugurating the not distant time when there shall
be neither oppressed nor oppressors!”
Such millennial dreams in such mediæval cities prove that Mazzini was no
sport of nature, but a true son of Italy; seed-plot of all the
mysticisms and aspirations from St. Francis and Dante to Gioberti and
David Lazzaretti.