Chapter XXI: Part II (3)

What beam is that, guiding once more from far
Earth’s Elders Rome-ward over sea and land?
What Sanctity, serene as Bethlehem’s star,
From East and West leads on each pilgrim band?
God’s light it is—on an unsceptred Hand!
God’s promise, shining without let or bar,
O’er sleeping realms that yet may wake in war,
Forth from that Brow Discrowned whose high command
Freshens in splendor with the advancing night
Missioned to blot all godless crowns with gloom:—
Like fruits untimely from a tree in blight
Such crowns shall fall. Even now they know their doom!
Advance, pure hearts! Your instinct guides you right
The Bethlehem Crib, this day, is by Saint Peter’s tomb.

II.
THE JERUSALEM OF THE NEW LAW.

“The Tribes ascend.” Ten centuries and nine
Have well-nigh passed since first the earth’s green breast
Confessed, deep-graved, those feet that Christ confessed,—
Those feet which, then when earth was Palestine,
Circled her Salem new. Mankind was thine,
O Rome, that time. All nations sent their best
To waft thee offerings, and their faith attest:—
They love thee most who love thee in decline.
The noble seek thy courts. What gibbering crew
Snarls at their heels? The brood that fears and hates;—
Prescient Defeat in bonds, that jeers the brave:
Ascend, true hearts! Such tribute is your due!
In Rome’s old triumphs thus the car-bound slave
Scoffed, as he passed, of Fortune’s spite, and Fate’s.[42]

Footnote 42:

In the Roman triumphs a captive slave was bound to the car of the
conqueror, into whose ear his office was to whisper of fortune’s
instability.

III.
THE CONFESSOR PONTIFF.

Full fifty years are past since first that weight
Descended on his head which made more strong
His heart, his hands more swift to war with wrong—
His martyred Master’s dread Episcopate:
Full thirty years beside the Apostles’ Gate
He reigned, and reigns: he roamed, an exile, long:
Restored, he faced once more the apostate throng,
Unbowed in woes, in greatness unelate.
New Hierarchies he sped to realms remote:
Central, by Peter’s Tomb he raised his hands
Blessing his thousand bishops from all lands;
Confirmed their great decree. False kings he smote:—
How long, just God, shall Treason’s banner float
O’er faith’s chief shrine profaned by rebel bands?

POPE PIUS THE NINTH.[43]

Footnote 43:

_Pie IX.: sa vie, son Histoire, son Siècle._ Par J. M. Villefranche.
Lyons. 1876.

_Rome: its Ruler and its Institutions._ By John Francis Maguire, M.P.
New York. 1858.

_Italy in 1848._ By L. Mariotti. London. 1851.

_The Secret Societies of the European Revolution, 1776-1876._ By
Thomas Frost. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1876.

The whole Catholic world prepares to celebrate on the 3d of June of this year the fiftieth anniversary of an episcopate which has no parallel in the history of the church. Our Holy Father Pius IX. has surpassed most of his predecessors in the importance of his labors, and has far exceeded them all in the length of his pontificate. He was young when he reached the dignity of bishop, but Leo XII., to whom he owed his promotion, had already discerned the beauty of his character. Sinigaglia, where he was born, on the 13th of May, 1792; Volterra, where he passed six years at college; Rome, where he studied theology, abound with stories of the sweet and sunny disposition, the fervent piety, and the burning zeal which illustrated even his tenderest years. He was six years of age when the venerable Pius VI. was dragged away into captivity, and the biographers of Pius IX. speak of the excitement which stirred his boyish heart, and the prayers which he poured out night and morning at his mother’s knee for the outraged church. His earliest recollections of the Papacy were a fit preparation for what he was to undergo in after-life. The Holy Father appeared to his young eyes, not as the crowned pontiff, but as the suffering and heroic confessor. He saw Pius VII. following Pius VI. into banishment. He saw the last inch of territory taken from the Holy See. One of his uncles, a canon of St. Peter’s, was driven from Rome on account of his fidelity to the pope; and another uncle, who was Bishop of Pesaro, was thrown into prison for the same cause. He had finished his course at college and was living at home when Pius VII. returned from exile, and he was presented to the pontiff as he passed through Sinigaglia on the road to Rome. The Mastai family were distantly related to Pius VII., and the pope took an interest in his kinsman. But there was an obstacle which seemed likely to defeat the young Mastai’s desire to enter holy orders. He was subject to fits of epilepsy. The physicians gave him no hope of a cure. About the time of the pope’s return, however, the violence of the disorder began to abate, and his health was soon so far restored that he was encouraged to continue his studies for the church. He always ascribed his relief to the protection of the Blessed Virgin. In 1819 he was ordained priest by special dispensation, and appointed to the humble duty of serving the asylum for poor children established in the Via Giulia in Rome by a pious mason named Giovanni Borgi. It was called the Asylum Tata Giovanni, because “Tata Giovanni”—or Papa John—was the name which the lads used to give their protector. The Abbate Mastai had been a good friend and helper of Papa John, and was glad of the privilege of continuing his work now that the benevolent old man had gone to his reward. He occupied a little chamber in the asylum. He ate at the table with the boys. He spent all his income in their service. He kept his regard for them long after they had grown up, and even as Pope he remembered the names of his pupils and followed their fortunes with a tender interest. It has often been said that Pius IX. never forgot anybody.

The first employment which brought him into public notice was a mission to the New World. Some of the clergy of the South American states had petitioned the Holy See to fill their long-vacant bishoprics. Many years had passed since the close of their war of independence with Spain, but the mother-country still asserted the authority which she no longer attempted to enforce, and claimed the right of presentation to sees long withdrawn from her jurisdiction. The church in South America remained, consequently, in lamentable confusion until the Sovereign Pontiff resolved to re-establish order by the exercise of his prerogative, without government interference from either side; and the embassy of which we speak was despatched in consequence. Monsignore Muzi, with the title of vicar-apostolic, was at the head of it, and the Abbate Mastai was appointed adjunct.[44] Before the expedition sailed Pope Pius VII. died, but Leo XII. confirmed the selections made by his predecessor; and, indeed, the choice of the Abbate Mastai had been made originally by his advice. On the voyage the ship was driven by stress of weather into the Spanish port of Palma, in the island of Majorca. The governor threw the embassy into prison and kept them for some days in seclusion, on the ground that the country to which they were bound was in rebellion against the Spanish crown. “Then,” said the Pope, in telling this adventure nearly half a century afterward, “I realized the necessity of the papal independence. They sent me a ration of food every day from the ship, but I was allowed neither letters nor papers. I was initiated on this occasion, however, into the little stratagems of solitary prisoners; for we hid our correspondence in loaves of bread.” The embassy got away at last and spent two years of fatigue and danger in South America, visiting the missions of Chili, Peru, and Colombia, traversing the awful passes of the Cordilleras, and crossing the continent in bullock-carts—a journey which took them nearly two months. Once, in going by sea from Valparaiso to Callao, their vessel, caught near the coast in a gale, was driving upon the rocks when a fisherman put off in his boat, boarded them in the midst of the storm, and brought them through intricate passages into the harbor of Arica. The next day the Abbate Mastai visited the hut of this daring pilot, and left with him a purse containing about four hundred dollars. After becoming Pope he sent the man a second purse of equal value and his picture. The fisherman was overwhelmed with gratitude. The first four hundred dollars had proved the making of his fortune. He gave the second to the poor, and placed the picture of the Pope in a little chapel which he had built on a spot overlooking the sea.

Footnote 44:

For a full account of this mission see THE CATHOLIC WORLD for January,
1876.

The embassy returned to Rome in 1825, and the Abbate Mastai was appointed canon of Santa Maria in Via Lata, a little church on the Corso, with an oratory in which pious tradition relates that St. Paul and St. Luke used to teach the faith to the first Christians of Rome. He was also promoted to the prelacy and placed at the head of the great Hospital of St. Michael. “The Hospital of St. Michael,” says one of the latest of the biographers of Pius IX., “is a city in itself, and its administration is a real government.” Founded two centuries ago by Innocent X., it grew, by the additions of later pontiffs, to be one of the greatest and grandest asylums in existence—a house of refuge for the young, a retreat for the aged and infirm, a hospital for the sick, a reformatory for Magdalens, a home for virtuous girls, and, besides all that, a school of arts and industries. When Monsignore Mastai assumed the presidency of this vast and complicated institution, every department of it was in a deplorable state of disorganization. Nearly all the earnings of the boys and girls in the industrial schools went towards the support of the establishment, and yet there was an enormous deficit in the revenues. Bankruptcy seemed at hand. The new president took up his task with magnificent ardor and equally magnificent discretion, with the enthusiasm of a reformer and the practical sagacity of a man of business. In two years the disorder was at an end. The expenses of the institution were brought within its income, yet its charity was enlarged rather than restricted, and a large share of the earnings of the boys was paid into a savings’ fund, to be returned to them when they went out into the world. Monsignore Mastai had obtained this remarkable result in part by his talent for business; but not wholly by that, for when the work was done his own patrimony had disappeared. “Of what use is money to a priest,” said he, “except to be spent in the cause of charity?” So it happened that when Leo XII. called him to the archbishopric of Spoleto in 1827 he had not money enough to pay for his bulls. The last acre of his estate was sold for the customary fees, and he entered Spoleto as penniless as the apostle whom our Lord commanded to take the tax-money from the mouth of a fish.

The first years of his episcopate were passed as any one who had watched the labors of his priesthood might have predicted that they would be. He was rarely seen by the courtiers of the papal palace, but his people knew him as the friend and father of the poor, and loved him for a tenderness and generosity almost without bounds. He filled his diocese with good works, founding seminaries and asylums, introducing charitable orders, always setting a practical example of beneficence by attending personally to the wants of the unfortunate. He spent in alms the last copper in his purse, and sold the ornaments from his parlor for the poor when his purse was empty. It was the golden time of his life—a time of peace and consolation. The church in Italy just then was at rest. A long period of political disturbance had been followed by comparative quiet. Convents and pious schools were multiplied, and the saintly Archbishop of Spoleto found himself in the midst of a devout clergy and a grateful people. There was a short outbreak in the Romagna in 1831, premature and easily suppressed, and it was then that the archbishop was brought for the first time into contact with the spirit of revolution destined to make such a bitter and memorable war upon him in later years. Among the adventurers implicated in the movement were two scions of the Bonaparte family. The elder brother died during the enterprise; the younger lived to become emperor. There is a story that when Louis Napoleon fled from the ruin of the revolt in the Romagna, he knocked one night at the door of the Archbishop of Spoleto, and owed his safety to the charity of that most charitable of men. It is a story which rests upon no very firm authority, and yet, though often published, it stands uncontradicted. It is certain, however, that in the last days of the insurrection the archbishop did show his tenderness for the unfortunate in a signal manner. Four thousand revolutionists, pursued by Austrian troops, presented themselves before Spoleto. The archbishop went out to meet them. He persuaded them, since their cause was lost, to lay down their arms. He gave them several thousand crowns for their immediate needs. He pledged his word that they should not be molested. Then he performed the still more difficult task of inducing the Austrian commander to ratify the promise. The pursuit was abandoned; the insurgents retired quietly to their homes. Pope Gregory XVI., however, was not pleased with this transaction, and the archbishop was called to Rome to defend himself. We must presume that his explanation was satisfactory; for the next year he was advanced to the see of Imola. This is only a suffragan see, but it is more important in itself than the archbishopric of Spoleto, and is, moreover, what is called a cardinalitial post—under ordinary circumstances a step towards the higher dignity of the scarlet hat. It was held by Pius VII. when he was Cardinal Chiaramonti. The promotion of Bishop Mastai came in due course. His creation as cardinal was announced in December, 1840, having been reserved _in petto_ since the previous year, and he took his title from the church of SS. Peter and Marcellinus. With his new dignity he adopted no new mode of life. Works of charity and devotion still filled his days. The love and respect of all classes of men still encompassed him. It is the best proof of the tranquil and happy course of his episcopate that of the nineteen years which he passed at Spoleto and Imola there is hardly an incident to be related.

His whole life thus far seems to have been a providential preparation for the two great works for which he was destined by Almighty God. On the spiritual side of the church he was to bring about the consolidation of Catholic dogma and the complete definition and development of the authority of the church over the minds and hearts of her children. On the secular side, after showing the perfect compatibility of the temporal power with the needs of modern society, he was to guide the church with fortitude and prudence, and give the Christian world a shining example of constancy during the trying days that were to see that power destroyed. What better training could he have had for this double destiny than so many years of charitable labor and close intercourse with God? He issued at last from his pious retirement with a character enriched by the daily practice of virtue, a disposition sweetened by the habit of self-sacrifice, a resolution strengthened by reliance upon God, and a heavenly courage that was proof against the threats and buffets of the world.

I.

We have spoken of the brief season of repose in Italian politics about the time of our Holy Father’s elevation to the episcopate. It was, indeed, only a transient gleam of sunlight in the midst of a tempestuous era. We come now to a period of universal disturbance. This is not the place to discuss the causes of the great revulsions of 1848. Probably they were more complex and reached further back than the world generally supposes. But whatever may have been the local provocations for revolt in particular states, it is clear that, for more than a quarter of a century before the date with which we are now occupied, the revolutionary tendencies of all Europe had shown a unity of direction which implied a single guiding impulse. It is not credible that a few clubs of political enthusiasts, visionary young students, hare-brained apothecaries, and metaphysical breeches-makers should be able by the fire of their own genius to set a continent in flames. The revolutionary propaganda of 1830-1848 found in every country of Europe a combustible population only waiting for the spark. Some states were rotten with social and moral disorders of long standing; some, like Poland, were writhing under an oppression which moved the sympathies of the whole world; some fretted under the restrictions of antiquated forms of government, unsuited to the wants of an expanding society. Thus the generous and patriotic were easily hurried into enterprises whose true purpose they were far from suspecting. The central influence which vitalized and directed all the scattered tendencies towards revolt was the conspiracy of the secret societies. “In the attempt to conduct the government of the world,” said the British prime minister last autumn, in his address at Aylesbury, “there are new elements to be considered which our predecessors had not to deal with. We have not only to deal with emperors, princes, and ministers, but there are the secret societies—an element which we must take into consideration, which at the last moment may baffle all our arrangements, which have their agents everywhere, which countenance assassination, and which, if necessary, could produce a massacre.” Lord Beaconsfield’s statement was a very mild one. The secret societies had become, at the time of which we write, the most formidable force in European politics. There was not a corner of the Continent in which their power was not felt. Intimately allied with Freemasonry, their origin dates back to a remote, unknown time. They were already strong in the eighteenth century, and their share in the great French Revolution is well understood. They became formidable in the Illuminism of Weishaupt in Germany a hundred years ago. They appeared in the Tugendbund, which had so large a share in the overthrow of the governments imposed upon the German states by Napoleon I. They were busy in Russia, in Greece, in Ireland, in Spain, and even in the Swiss Republic; in Italy they have never been idle since the first appearance of the Carbonari at the beginning of the century; in France they are the only power which seems to be permanent. As early as 1821 the Italian revolutionist, Pepe, gave Carbonarism an international character by establishing in Spain a secret association of the “advanced political reformers of all the European states”; and in 1834 Mazzini made a much more effective union of the revolutionary elements when, with the aid of Italian, Polish, and German refugees, he founded at Berne the society of Young Europe. The organization of Young Germany, Young Poland, and Young Switzerland dates from the same time and place, and Switzerland became the centre of all the agitations of the Continent. Young Italy had been grafted upon Carbonarism by Mazzini as early as 1831.

Many of these associations, as we have already intimated, professed an excellent object. They would have been comparatively harmless, if they had not attracted and deceived the good. The Tugendbund, for instance, originally aimed at the deliverance of Germany from a foreign yoke; Young Poland captivated the noble and the ardent; even the Carbonari had an alluring watchword in the Unity and Independence of Italy. But there was always an ulterior purpose, revealed only to the initiated. That purpose was one and unchanging, and it was the bond which united all the leaders of the vast conspiracy from the Irish Sea to the Grecian Archipelago, from Gibraltar to Nova Zembla. It was the establishment everywhere of an atheistic democracy; or rather the destruction simultaneously of all religion, all government, and all social bonds. Kings and priests were equally hateful to the “Illuminated.” There was to be no recognition of God in their republic. It was hostile not only to the Catholic Church as an organization, but to Christianity as a moral influence. The Illuminati were founded in the midst of the Masonic lodges of Bavaria; they passed thence into Austria, Saxony, Holland, Italy, and Switzerland; they were carried to Paris by Mirabeau, who was initiated in Germany; they were united with the Freemasons all over France. Recognized as the parents of the later societies, they sounded as early as 1777 the key-note of the whole complex movement. Findel, the Masonic historian of Freemasonry, declares that “the most decisive agent” in giving the order a political and anti-religious character was “that intellectual movement known under the name of English deism, which boldly rejected all revelation and all religious dogmas, and under the victorious banner of reason and criticism broke down all barriers in its path.” But Weishaupt found still too much “political and religious prejudice” remaining in the Freemasons, and consequently devised a system which, as he expressed it, would “attract Christians of every communion and gradually free them from all religious prejudices.” The “illumination” of the brethren was to be accomplished by a course of gradual education in which Christianity was carefully ignored. It was only in the higher degrees that the initiated were taught that the fall of man meant nothing but the subjection of the individual to civil society; that “illumination” consisted in getting rid of all governments; and that “the secret associations were gradually and silently to possess themselves of the government of the states, making use for this purpose of the means which the wicked use for attaining their base ends.” We quote this from the discourse read at initiation into one of the higher degrees, and discovered when the papers of the fraternity were seized by the Elector of Bavaria in 1785. The same document continues: “Princes and priests are in particular the wicked whose hands we must tie up by means of these associations, if we cannot wipe them out altogether.” Patriotism was defined as a narrow-minded prejudice; and, finally, the illuminated man was taught that everything is material, that religion has no foundation, that all nations must be brought back, either by peaceable means or by force, to their pristine condition of unrestricted liberty, for “all subordination must vanish from the face of the earth.” The ceremonies of initiation into the lodges of the Carbonari remind us so strongly of this explanation of the principles of Illuminism that it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the two associations are closely connected. The neophyte was taught the same doctrine in both: that man had everywhere fallen into the hands of oppressors, whose authority it was the mission of the enlightened to cast off. Here, however, as in the earlier society, the pagan character of the proposed new life was only revealed by degrees to those who were prepared for it. The conspirators seem to have accommodated their system of education to the peculiarities of national training and disposition. For example, they humored the religious tendencies of the Italians by retaining the name of God and the image of the crucifix in the ceremonial of the lower degrees, and even published a forged bull, in the name of Pope Pius VII., approving the Carbonari; while in the training of Young Germany just a contrary course was adopted. “We are obliged to treat new-comers very cautiously,” says a report from a propagandist committee established among the Germans in Switzerland, “to bring them step by step into the right road, and the principal thing in this respect is to show them that religion is nothing but a pile of rubbish.” Indeed, the rampant atheism of the secret societies of Germany, and also of France, has always been notorious. Of the still more horrible manifestations of impiety to which they were carried in Italy we hesitate to speak, lest we be suspected of sensational exaggerations. All that we have said thus far of the principles and practices of the Masons, Illuminati, and Carbonari is quoted from their own books and papers, and may be found in the work of their admirer and apologist, Thomas Frost, the title of which we have placed at the head of this article. For a more startling picture of their inner mysteries we refer the reader to Father Bresciani,[45] who lived in Rome in 1848 and had direct testimony of horrors which almost defy belief. Mr. Frost, however, gives a glimpse of the worse than pagan spirit of Carbonarism when he describes the initiation into the second degree—a ceremony wherein the candidate, crowned with thorns and bearing a cross, personated our divine Lord, and knelt to ask pardon of Pilate, Caiphas, and Herod, represented by the grand master and two assistants, the pardon being granted at the intercession of the assembled Carbonari! In all the societies an abstract morality was taught which was not the morality of Jesus Christ, and laws were laid down at variance with the laws of the state. Assassination was one of the chief duties which the fraternity enjoined upon its votaries. The initiated fancied that they emancipated themselves from all subordination; but they bound themselves by the most awful penalties to murder any one, even friend or brother, who might be pointed out for death by some unseen, unknown, and shadowy authority.

Footnote 45:

_The Jew of Verona._ English translation, 2 vols. 12mo. Baltimore.
1854.

When Pope Gregory XVI. came to the throne the conspiracies of ten years were just ripening. He was assailed in the very first month of his pontificate by the rising in the Romagna, and he spent the fifteen years of his reign in a struggle to keep down the evil spirit whose apparition then alarmed him. All Europe during these fifteen years was a volcano sending forth the deep mutterings and sulphurous vapors which presage an eruption. France was never at peace from the overthrow of Charles X. in 1830 till after the re-establishment of the empire—if even she is at peace yet. Every capital in Germany was in nightly danger of the dagger, the torch, and the barricade. Switzerland, though a free republic, was no less severely tormented by conspiracies than the monarchical countries, and after several years of contention her secret societies took arms in 1844 to compel the Catholic cantons, against the constitution of the confederation, to expel the Jesuits. In Poland, at the very moment when the nobles were preparing a revolt against the Austrian yoke, a socialistic and agrarian rising of the peasants against the nobles filled Galicia with massacres of incredible barbarity. In Italy the Carbonari negotiated for a while with the Duke of Modena, by whose aid they proposed to expel the Austrians from Lombardy and Venice, and unite the states of the north and centre under one sovereign—of course with the further object, held in reserve, of getting rid of the Duke of Modena as soon as they had no further use for him: a scheme almost exactly like that which Young Italy tried a few years later with Charles Albert of Sardinia. Defeated in this project and crushed in attempts at insurrection, they worked for some time in secret, but they worked with furious energy. The doctrines of Illumination were carried into every corner of the peninsula. A score of local secret associations came into existence, adding to the wickedness of the parent society some peculiar brutality of their own. Ancona had its “Society of Death,” Sinigaglia its “Infernal Association,” Leghorn its “Society of Slayers,” Faenza its “Band of Stabbers.”

Between 1831 and 1840, however, the policy of the Italian revolutionists was greatly modified. Mazzini established Young Italy under the conviction that the old methods of conspiracy must fail. Instead of wasting their strength in vain efforts to overturn the Italian princes singly, he urged the brethren to concentrate their energies upon a movement for the expulsion of the Austrians and a consolidation of all the Italian states. The fate of pope, and kings, and princes could be settled afterwards. “All questions as to forms of internal policy,” he wrote, “can be put off till the close of the war of independence.” Italy and independence! This was a programme, not for the secret societies alone, but for the whole peninsula. It captivated the generous, the impulsive, the ardent, the ambitious. It brought to the same work poetry, patriotism, and religion, the pistol, the dagger, and the poisoned cup. What was to be done with Italy, when it was united and rid of the Austrians, was one of the secrets of the initiated never explained to the common people; but remarkable illustrations of the inner character of this movement were found in 1844 among certain papers seized by the police in Rome. “Our watchword,” wrote one of the leaders, “must be Religion, Union, Independence. As for the King of Sardinia, we should seek some favorable opportunity to poignard him. I recommend the same course to be pursued in regard to the King of Naples. The Lombards may second our efforts by poison, or by insurrection, under the form of little 'Sicilian Vespers’ against the Germans. Functionaries or private citizens who show a hostile spirit must be put to death. Let them be arrested quietly during the night, and the report be circulated that they have been exiled or sent to prison, or have absconded.” Mazzini himself a little later, in an address to Young Italy, gave a significant explanation of his idea. “In your country,” said he, “regeneration must come through the princes. Get them on your side. Attack their vanity. Let them march at the head, if they will, so long as they march your way. Few will go to the end. If they make concessions, praise them and insist upon something further. The essential thing is not to let them know what the goal of the revolution is. They must never see more than one step at a time.” And he urged also the importance of “managing” the clergy. “Its habits and hierarchy make it the imp of authority—that is to say, of despotism”; but the people believe in it, and we must make its influence of use. With the Jesuits, however, he proclaimed war to the knife. None of the socialists and infidels were willing to make any terms with the sons of St. Ignatius.

In the prosecution of this new scheme of revolution the conspirators obtained invaluable help from a most unexpected ally. The erring genius of the unfortunate Abbate Gioberti did more for them than the machinations of the lodges. Carried away by visions of a new Italy and a new Catholicism, he forgot the divine mission of the church in speculations as to what she might accomplish in purely secular enterprises. His great error was in thinking of religion as an agent of civilization rather than an instrumentality for saving souls, and thus he was led into the blunder of attempting to unite God and the world in an equal partnership. He conceived the idea of an Italian federation with the King of Sardinia as military head and the Pope as spiritual president—a sort of dual empire like that of Japan, with a tycoon at Turin, a mikado at the Vatican. But the clergy were to abdicate their dominion over the minds of men, and bend their energies to effecting an alliance of religion with a material progress that in his theory had outstripped the church and become for ever incompatible with ecclesiastical tutelage. He wished the priests to put themselves at the head of the new social movements, and, hand in hand with the political agitators, to lead Italy to a material glory such as no nation on earth had ever seen. His book, _Del Primato_, was welcomed with unparalleled enthusiasm. The charm of a brilliant style, the force of an original, cultivated, and poetic mind, the glamour of a philosophy which seemed to meet all the wants of an exciting and uneasy time, turned the heads of the whole nation. Gioberti, Cesare Balbo, Massimo d’Azeglio, were the creators of a new literature, and all Italy read them with flashing eyes and quickening pulse. Theirs was a reform which seized upon the fancy of good and bad alike, and hurried into a common delusion the heedless Christian and the veteran Carbonaro, the young, the imaginative, the adventurous, and the artful. Mazzini, who afterwards became one of Gioberti’s bitterest enemies, was too shrewd to undervalue this influence. He sought an interview with Gioberti in Paris; he offered terms of co-operation; he even went through the form of renouncing what he styled his own “more narrow views,” and proposed a National Association which, adjourning all questions of forms and spirit of government, faith or scepticism, God or the devil, should unite Italy in the single purpose of creating an Italian nation. Different as the aims of the two men were—for Gioberti included even the Austrian government of Lombardy and Venice in his union—they embraced each other for the moment. Together they swept the peninsula. Every city from Palermo to Milan was aflame with the new ideas. The soberest patriots lost their composure, and many of the clergy began to dream wild dreams of political change, and to see visions of reformed conspirators kneeling at the feet of a democratic pope. We look back upon those days from the vantage-ground of experience, and we wonder that men should have been so deceived. But 1848 had not then given the lie to the professions of 1846. Devout Italians at that time did not see, as we do, that the secret societies which assailed the church on one side of the Alps with fire and sword could not be sincere in offering to place it in a new position of power and glory on the other, nor did they realize the extent of the conspiracy to overwhelm religion, government, and social order throughout Europe in one general ruin.

That conspiracy was more formidable in Italy than anywhere else, and it was more formidable not only because it was better organized, but because it involved so many men of blameless character and offered to satisfy a lofty national aspiration. During the last years of Pope Gregory XVI. an explosion seemed inevitable. Probably nothing kept it back except the age and infirmities of the venerable pontiff; the leaders preferred to wait for his death. He died on the 1st of June, 1846. The whole peninsula was instantly in commotion, and the symptoms of violence in Rome were so alarming that people doubted the possibility of an election. Austria, as the power most directly interested in the secular politics of the Holy See, was understood to demand a continuance of the restrictive policy of Gregory; France, on the contrary, was said to desire a moderately liberal pope. To avoid pressure upon the conclave, as well as to forestall an outbreak, the Italian cardinals resolved to begin their deliberations at once and finish them quickly. Without waiting for their distant colleagues, they entered the Quirinal on the 14th, the doors were closed, the guards were set, and the balloting began. Two ballots are taken in the conclave every day. The persons whom public opinion selected as most likely to command the necessary thirty-four votes were Cardinals Gizzi and Lambruschini. The modest and retiring Cardinal Mastai seems to have been little known by the outside world, though his merit was no secret to the Sacred College. He was appointed scrutator, to open and read the ballots. At the first session of the conclave his name was proposed by Cardinal Altieri, Prince-Bishop of Albano, and the first scrutiny showed that he united a large party of the cardinals. On the second ballot he gained a little. On the third his vote was twenty-seven—only seven less than a majority. He retired to his cell and spent the whole time in prayer till the evening meeting. He came to the performance of his functions pale and agitated. When the ballots were taken from the chalice in which they had been collected, he read his own name on the first, on the second, on the third, on every paper up to the eighteenth. He could not go on; he begged the conclave to commit the rest of the task to another. But to change the scrutator in the midst of the vote would invalidate the election. The cardinals gathered around him; for some time he sat terrified and almost insensible, while streams of tears flowed down his cheeks. On the completion of the count it was found that he had the suffrages of thirty-six out of the fifty-four cardinals present. As the whole assembly rose to confirm the choice by unanimous acclamation, the Pope-elect fell upon his knees, and profound silence reigned in the Pauline Chapel while he communed with Almighty God.

It was on the following day, June 18, that, according to custom, the bricked-up window in the front of the Quirinal Palace was broken open, and the cardinals came out upon the balcony to announce to the waiting multitude the choice of a new pope. It is said that men turned to one another in surprise when they heard the name, and asked who this Cardinal Mastai could be. But when his beautiful and benignant face appeared among the throng, and his hand was raised in that gesture of benediction which all who have seen him will for ever associate with his memory, he won the love and admiration of the Roman people; and the true Romans have loved him ever since.

The story of his first days in the pontificate reads like a charming romance. He called the steward of the palace and said to him: “When I was bishop I spent for my personal expenses a crown a day; when I was cardinal I spent a crown and a half; and now that I am Pope you must not go beyond two crowns.” He went about the city alone to search out abuses and to look into the condition of the poor. He presented himself without warning at public institutions. He knocked at the doors of religious houses at night. He startled the congregation at St. Andrea del Valle by appearing unannounced in the pulpit to preach against blasphemy. He delighted children by visiting the schools. He talked freely with the humble whom he met in the streets and on the country roads. He gave lavishly to the needy. A poor market-gardener lost his horse and walked boldly into the palace to ask the Pope if he could not spare an old one from the Quirinal stables. A secretary found the man on the stairs and took his message to the Holy Father. “Yes,” was the Pope’s reply; “and give him this money, too. He must be very poor, or he never would come to the Quirinal to get a horse.”

But Pius IX. was not ignorant of the dangers which surrounded his throne. He chose his course promptly. It may be doubted whether stern measures of repression could have accomplished any good in the excitement of that time, but at any rate he had no taste for them. He favored the idea of a national confederation under the presidency of the Pope, wishing to accomplish it by a friendly alliance of the existing governments, not by war and revolution. For the rest, he looked forward to a reform in the administration of his states, and the introduction of liberal and popular institutions as fast as the old forms could be safely changed, and he purposed to rule by kindness, generosity, and confidence. Yet, as we shall see, he did not lack firmness when firmness was needed. One of his first acts was to declare an amnesty for political offences, and a characteristic anecdote is told of him in connection with it. He called a council of his principal advisers and asked their votes upon the proposed measure of mercy. To his chagrin, a majority of the balls voted were black. He took off his white cap and placed it over them; “Now,” said he, “they are all white.” The prisons were opened. The exiles returned. One thousand six hundred persons were restored to freedom and friends. Rome was in a tumult of joy. The populace thronged about the pontiff whenever he went abroad, and waited long hours before the palace windows to get his blessing. On the feast of St. Peter’s Chains a great number of the pardoned received communion from the Holy Father's hands, and the occasion was celebrated with lively demonstrations. Nor was the Pope satisfied with an easy act of clemency. He made a close personal study of the administration. A multitude of petty abuses were swept away. The taxes were reduced. The liberty of the press was enlarged. Industries were fostered; railways were planned. The Jews were relieved of burdensome and humiliating restrictions. Then the old municipal privileges of Rome were restored, and a long stride ahead was made by the formation of a lay consulta of state and the popular representation of the provinces in the central government.

Nothing could surpass the enthusiasm of the people at this dawn of a new political era. It was almost a continuous holiday in Rome, with gay processions by day and torch-light parades by night, public banquets in the vineyards and gardens, triumphal arches spanning the streets, the papal colors fluttering from every window and decorating every breast. Because those colors were white and yellow, it became a point of honor with delighted Romans to breakfast every morning on boiled eggs. Nor was it only Italy which raised the chorus of applause. All over the world the Papacy shone with a glory which it had hardly displayed since Leo XII. The Protestants of New York held a monster meeting of felicitation at the Broadway Tabernacle, where cordial letters were read from ex-President Van Buren and Vice-President Dallas, and an enthusiastic address to the Pope, prepared by Horace Greeley, was adopted by acclamation. The British government offered its congratulations. The French ministry, led by M. Guizot, rivalled the French opposition, led by M. Thiers, in resolutions and speeches of encouragement. Mazzini, true to the policy already explained, addressed to the Holy Father a letter of ostensible sympathy and praise. Such halcyon days might well have filled the most wary with a dangerous confidence.

The Pope was not deceived. He knew that under this outward show of peace the conspiracy was active. The first attempt of the revolutionary party was to separate him from the cardinals. Three weeks after the amnesty, as he drove under one of the arches erected in his honor, the mob stopped some of the prelates of his suite and refused to let them pass. Certain demonstrations at the popular out-of-door repasts became so significant that the gatherings had to be forbidden. Before the end of the year the cry of “Viva Pio Nono!” changed to “Viva Pio Nono Solo!” and mingled with shouts of “Down with the Jesuits!” and “Death to the retrograders!” The next summer Rome was thrown into a fever of rage by an invention so outrageous and yet so ridiculous that one reads of it with amazement. It was alleged that Cardinal Lambruschini, the Austrian government, and the General of the Jesuits had organized a plot to fall upon the populace on the anniversary of the amnesty, and in the midst of the massacre to get possession of the Pope and put a stop to his liberalism. The _fête_ appointed for the anniversary was given up, and the excitement enabled the revolutionists to depose the old police and throw the city into the arms of the civic guard, of which they were really the directing force. On New Year’s day, 1848, the Pope was molested in the street by a disorderly mob, shouting menaces against “reactionists” and “Jesuits.” The violence of the radical faction increased; their demeanor became more and more insulting; the danger of riot grew imminent; the civil guard showed plain symptoms of disloyalty. Yet all this while the Holy Father persevered in his reforms. He took no step backward. He withdrew no concession. The measure of popular liberty was constantly enlarging, the administration becoming more thoroughly representative. If it was “progress” that the agitators wanted, what was this?

We cannot understand the history of this strange time without bearing in mind that the danger arose, not from anything the Pope had done or failed to do, but from the steady and stealthy advance of the pagan conspiracy. Rome, under the mild rule of Pius IX., became the resort of all the chief revolutionists of the Continent, and it is hardly too much to say that the particular house in Rome where they met and plotted with the most comfort was the British embassy. Palmerston’s policy was always to encourage radical movements on the Continent. When he sent Lord Minto, therefore, as a special envoy to Italy, the parlors of that nobleman were instantly thronged by the Carbonari. In this diplomatic sanctuary gathered a strange company of princes and demagogues—Ciceruacchio, the orator of the rabble; Prince Charles Bonaparte, the radical in purple; Sterbini, the poet, physician, and journalist; Tofanelli, the tavern-keeper; Materazzi, patriot and joiner; Galetti, the grocer, who became Minister of Police in one of the later democratic cabinets.

A letter of Mazzini’s, written in 1847, taught Young Italy that the time for action was close at hand; it was useless to count upon the Pope; their best policy was to inflame the popular hatred of Austria; then provoke Austria to attack them; and in the heat of war to accomplish the rest. But at this critical time Austria herself committed an act which hastened the explosion. Alarmed at the aspect of affairs in Central Italy, she marched a body of troops into the papal territory. The treaty of 1815 gave her the right to place a garrison in the citadel of Ferrara; she went further and occupied the town; and although the spirited protest of the Pope caused her to withdraw after some delay, the occasion which the secret societies desired had been given, and a cry for war and independence resounded from the Gulf of Genoa to the Bay of Naples. We know but imperfectly the hidden springs of action of that year of revolutions; but, as if by concert, the insurrection flashed up almost simultaneously all over the Continent. The Milanese flew to arms. The revolt broke out in Vienna. Barricades arose at Berlin. The Republic was proclaimed in Paris. Naples and Tuscany were menaced. The municipality of Rome waited upon the Pope and demanded a constitution. He consented to give it. “I would have preferred,” said he, “to watch for a while the result of the reforms already instituted; but other Italian princes have granted constitutions, and I will not show less confidence in my subjects than they have had in theirs.” At the same time the ministry was changed. Cardinal Antonelli, whose management of the finances had made him very popular, became Secretary of State, and three of the most moderate of the liberals—Minghetti, Galetti, and Sturbinetti—entered the cabinet. It is characteristic of the spirit of the revolution that the first effect of these concessions was to stimulate a fresh attack upon the church, disorders in Rome, and an assault upon the Gesù. The Jesuits were forced to close their establishment, some taking flight, others finding shelter in private houses. The constitution was proclaimed in March. It provided for a Senate and a House of Deputies—the senators to be appointed for life, the deputies to be elected by the taxpayers of Rome and the provinces. This parliament was not to meddle with ecclesiastical affairs, but in other matters it had the usual powers of legislation.

Meantime, the war of independence in the north of Italy was in the full tide of success. Young Italy believed it had found a leader in Charles Albert of Sardinia. The Austrians were driven from Milan. The republic lived again in Venice. The Pope sent 17,000 men to protect his frontiers, with strict orders not to cross them. At once the conspirators spread the report that he had declared war against Austria. They called the people together in the Colosseum to ratify the new crusade, and there the Barnabite monk, Gavazzi, masquerading in the character of a new Peter the Hermit and brandishing a tricolored cross, made his first bid for notoriety. There were only 7,000 regular troops in the papal expedition; the rest were motley volunteers—the flower of the nobility and the dregs of the wine-shop, the most gallant lads of Rome and the scum of all the political clubs of the Continent. They hurried through the Romagna, gutting taverns and hunting Jesuits by the way, and when they reached Bologna their general (the Piedmontese, Durando) announced that the Austrians were making war upon our Lord, and that the soldiers of the Pope would give them battle with the cry, “God wills it!” It was afterwards discovered that this direct defiance of the Pope’s commands, this open act of hostility against a power with which the states of the church were at peace, was in accordance with secret instructions from the Pope’s radical Minister of War. While the sovereign ordered his troops to remain strictly on the defensive within their own boundaries, the ministers told Durando to cross over into Lombardy and place himself at the disposal of Charles Albert; and Durando prepared to obey them. It was impossible for the Holy Father to remain silent under such an outrage. He repudiated Durando’s order of the day in the official press, and he spoke more fully in an allocution: “We shall not make war upon Austria; we embrace all countries, all nations, with an equal paternal love.” And he took occasion at the same time to denounce the project of destroying all the governments of the peninsula in order to build out of their ruins one Italian republic with the Pope at the head of it. He was no doubt prepared for the explosion of wrath which followed. But the revolution was not to be ignored any longer. For some time ministers had been in the habit of counterfeiting his assent to measures of which he disapproved; if the army was to make war without his consent, his reign was at an end. Rome was in a tempest. The cry of “Treason!” rang through the streets. Ciceruacchio proposed to kill all the priests. The civic guards flew to arms, posted soldiers at the doors of the cardinals, and refused to recognize the Pope’s orders. A new and more radical ministry, led by Count Mamiani, came into office on the 3d of May, and on the same day the Holy Father wrote a touching letter to the Emperor of Austria—a plea for peace and Italian independence: “We exhort your majesty with the most paternal affection to withdraw from a contest which cannot reconquer for the empire the hearts of the Lombards and Venetians. There is no grandeur in a domination which rests only on the sword.”

The new ministry insisted at once upon war, but here it found the determination of the Pope unalterable. There seems to have been an attempt, of which the ministers themselves were possibly innocent, to precipitate hostilities by rousing an uncontrollable popular impulse. One day a courier, breathless and dusty, rode through the Corso announcing a great victory of Charles Albert over the Austrians. The city was illuminated; there was talk of forcing the clergy to chant _Te Deum_ in the churches. But the next day it was discovered that the messenger, who entered Rome as if from Lombardy by the Porta del Popolo, had left the city only an hour before by the Porta Angelica, gathering all the stains of travel in an easy ride along the walls, and had been paid three dollars for the performance. Charles Albert had been signally defeated.

Whatever fitness for self-government might be latent in the Roman people, it was certain that, in the existing condition of the Pontifical States, a government by the people was out of the question. Every attempt to satisfy the popular aspirations, every scheme for the introduction of parliamentary and representative institutions, was baffled by the Mazzinian clubs, whose rule, supported by conspiracy and assassination, was the most cruel and absolute of despotisms, yet destitute of that stability and force which make some despotisms respectable. They threatened the church with spoliation, the clergy with death, the young with atheism. They undermined the authority of all government, not merely of this or that particular form, but of all forms. Italy appeared to be rushing towards anarchy. It was time to cry, Halt! Pius resolved to yield not another inch, but, without withdrawing any reasonable concession, to put what remained of his authority upon a firm basis. He invited Count Pellegrino Rossi to form a cabinet.