Chapter XXII: Part II (4)

Count Rossi was an Italian by birth, a Swiss by adoption, a Frenchman by subsequent choice, an old Carbonaro, an old conspirator, an old political exile. He was an ardent partisan of Italian unity, but he had seen the emptiness of some of his early illusions, and he had abandoned the secret societies. He had come to Rome in the time of Gregory XVI. as ambassador of Louis Philippe, charged with a negotiation for the removal of the Jesuits from France; in his diplomatic capacity he had been one of the most moderate advisers of Pius IX.; and after the fall of Louis Philippe he had remained in Rome as a private citizen. He accepted the task of restoring order; he reorganized the administration, negotiated with Naples, Turin, and Florence for the formation of an Italian confederation under the presidency of the Pope, arrested Gavazzi, who was preaching rebellion, and brought back some of the troops which his predecessors had sent away from Rome. The radical press speedily opened an attack upon him. The clubs began to prepare for his downfall. The 15th of November, two months after his accession to power, was the date fixed for the opening of the Chambers. He received more than one warning that the same day had been appointed for his death. The wife of the Minister of War wrote him that his life was to be attempted as he entered the Chamber. A Frenchman sent him a note to the same effect. A priest stopped him at the Quirinal and repeated the warning. The Pope had also learned of the plans of the conspirators and begged Rossi to beware. “They are cowards,” replied the count; “they will not dare to strike.” “The cause of the Pope,” said the intrepid minister to one of his colleagues, “is the cause of God. I must go where my duty calls me.” On the night before the opening of the parliament a corpse was taken from one of the hospitals and carried secretly to the little Capranica theatre. There a select band of conspirators rehearsed the assassination, and the chosen instrument of the vengeance of the societies, a young sculptor named Costantini, learned by repeated practice where to strike. They were waiting for the count at the entrance to the hall of Deputies. As he placed his foot upon the steps they gathered around him. One struck him on the side. He turned his head, and Costantini plunged a dagger into the carotid artery. The nearest priest was called, and Rossi lived just long enough to receive absolution. He had yielded to the fears of his friends so far as to post extra guards about the court and staircase; _sed quis custodiet custodes?_ The assassin and his accomplices walked away unmolested and passed the night promenading the city with songs of triumph. The streets were hung with flags. The bloody dagger, decked with flowers, was exposed to the veneration of their party on the top of a tricolored standard, and held up before the windows of the weeping family of the victim. When the news of the awful crime committed on the stairs was carried into the Chamber, the deputies manifested no concern. “It is nothing, gentlemen,” said Sterbini; “let us to business.” When it was made known to the Pope he fell upon his knees and remained some time in silent prayer. “Count Rossi has died a martyr,” said he; “God will receive his soul in peace.”

The next day the Quirinal was surrounded by a menacing crowd demanding an immediate declaration of war against Austria, the convocation of a Constituent Assembly to devise a new form of government, and the surrender of all power in the meantime to a ministry headed by Sterbini. The Pope would not listen to them. Then they tried to burn the palace. A single volley from the Swiss Guard, fired over the heads of the mob, drove them back. But they returned in force, with an ultimatum, backed by cannon and the whole civic guard. Sharp-shooters occupied the house-tops or sheltered themselves behind the famous equestrian groups in the centre of the piazza, and poured a shower of balls into the palace windows. One of the papal secretaries was killed. A bullet entered the Pope’s chamber. The Holy Father called the diplomatic corps together and told them that he must yield. “But let Europe know that I am a prisoner here; I have no part in the government; they shall rule in their own name, not mine.”

His chief thought now was flight. But he was closely watched and the guards invaded even his private apartments. On the 22d of November, six days after the attack upon the Quirinal, he received from the Bishop of Valence in France a silver pyx in which Pope Pius VI. used to carry the Blessed Sacrament suspended from his neck during his painful exile. “Heir to the name, the see, the virtues, the courage, and many of the tribulations of this great pontiff,” wrote the bishop, “you will perhaps attach some value to this interesting little relic, which I trust may not serve the same destiny in your Holiness’s hands as in those of its former possessor.” The Pope looked upon this as a providential provision for his journey. The ingenuity of the Duke d’Harcourt, ambassador of France, and the boldness of the Bavarian minister, Count Spaur, aided by the quick wit of his pious French wife, finally arranged the escape. The Pope’s faithful gentleman-in-waiting, Filippani, collected the little articles absolutely needed on the route, and at night carried them under his cloak, one by one, to the residence of Count Spaur. Meanwhile, it was announced in Rome that the count, accompanied by his family, was going to Naples on a diplomatic errand. The countess started first in her travelling carriage with her son and his tutor, giving out that her husband, detained a few hours in Rome by important business, would overtake her at Albano. Towards evening on the same day (November 24, 1848) the Duke d’Harcourt visited the Quirinal in state, and, being admitted to a private official interview with the Holy Father, began to read to him a series of long despatches. He read in a loud tone, so that his voice could be heard by the guards in the ante-room. If they could have seen what passed as well as they heard, they would have been very much astonished. For no sooner had the duke begun than the Pope retired to an inner chamber and transformed himself into a simple priest. He put on a black robe, an ample cloak, and a low, round hat, and, accompanied by Filippani, he reached the grand staircase by a private door, passed the guards unsuspected, and found himself in the street. Filippani had a carriage in readiness, and drove with his august master to the church of SS. Peter and Marcellinus, beyond the Colosseum, where Count Spaur was waiting with another conveyance. The Pope entered it; the count took the reins; they passed out by the gate of St. Giovanni, near the Lateran, the sentries being satisfied with the count’s declaration of his name and quality; and late in the night they reached a certain fountain on the Appian Way, where the countess was to meet them with the coach and four. When she drove up a few minutes later she was terrified at finding the fugitive surrounded by an armed patrol. Count Spaur was answering the questions of the soldiers, and the Pope and a trooper stood side by side against the fence. The countess did not lose her presence of mind. “Come, doctor,” she exclaimed, “jump in; you have kept us waiting”; and bidding good-night to the patrol, the party drove off at full speed. The Pope was the first to speak. “Courage!” said he; “I carry the Blessed Sacrament in the same pyx in which it was borne by Pius VI.” They crossed the Neapolitan frontier at daylight, and as soon as they were safe beyond the Pontifical States they all recited the _Te Deum_. They reached Gaeta in the afternoon. There Cardinal Antonelli joined them in disguise, and Count Spaur, posting on to Naples, with a letter from the Pope to King Ferdinand, resigned the care of the Holy Father to the secretary of the Spanish embassy. Refused admission to the bishop’s palace because the bishop was absent, the Pope and his companions took up their quarters at a poor inn, and there they were placed under surveillance by the military commander, Gen. Gross, who suspected them as spies. The general was questioning the countess and the cardinal next day, when he was astounded by the arrival of the king and queen with three vessels of war and a guard of honor. Count Spaur had reached Naples and delivered his letter to the king in person about midnight, and his majesty, after spending the rest of the night in preparations, embarked in the early morning to do honor to his illustrious guest. And during the year and a half spent by the Pope in the Neapolitan dominions, either at Gaeta or Portici, there was no possible mark of respect which King Ferdinand failed to show him. His purpose had been to embark in a Spanish frigate for the Balearic Islands, the scene of his brief and absurd imprisonment in 1823, but Ferdinand persuaded him to remain in Gaeta, where the royal palace was prepared for his occupation. There the diplomatic body gathered around him, and the cardinals assembled after escaping from Rome by various stratagems and disguises.

And how was it in Rome? The ministry of Sterbini, the parliament, and the authorities left by the Pope disappeared with equal suddenness, and the government passed into the hands, not by any means of the Roman people, but of Mazzini with the secret clubs, and of Garibaldi with two or three thousand soldiers of fortune, brought into the city from other parts of Italy. They pronounced the deposition of the Pope, and declared a republic with an executive triumvirate. Nominally the triumvirs were Mazzini, Armellini, and Saffi; in reality the head of the administration was Mazzini alone. Wherever the pagan democracy triumphed, even for a few days, the result was the same. Religion, the rights of property, and common morality suffered together and personal liberty vanished. Private estates in Rome were confiscated to the uses of the triumvirate under the guise of forced loans. The goods of the church were seized. The shrines and altars were stripped bare. Confessionals were burned in the Piazza del Popolo. The houses of the cardinals were sacked, convents were assaulted. Profane rites were celebrated in St. Peter’s at Easter and Corpus Christi; the papal benediction _urbi et orbi_ was travestied by a suspended priest; the canons of St. Peter’s were fined for refusing to take part in the impious ceremonies; the provost of the cathedral of Sinigaglia was put to death for a similar cause. The clergy were hunted like vermin, cut down in the public roads, dragged from hiding-places. The convent of St. Callisto was turned into a slaughter-house, where one of the Roman priest-catchers used to shut up his victims, and kill them at pleasure without the formality of trial or sentence. He killed fourteen there in one day. Two vine-dressers, accused of being Jesuits in disguise, were torn to pieces on the bridge of St. Angelo. Murder and pillage stalked hand in hand through the city. There soon ceased to be any real government at all in Rome, until on the 2d of July, 1849, the French army restored the papal authority after the horrors of a severe siege, in which foreigners, not Romans, manned the defences. Anywhere else in the world the quelling of such a revolt would have been followed by wholesale condemnations to the galleys and the scaffold. But nothing could conquer the kindness of Pius IX. His restoration, like his accession, was followed by an act of amnesty. It left in exile the guiltiest of the leaders; and care was taken to give the re-established government as much strength as the situation demanded. Some restrictions were certainly necessary; several priests had been assassinated since the surrender of the city; two attempts had been made to burn the Quirinal; and placards menaced with the vengeance of the societies all Romans who should welcome the Pope on his return.

Nevertheless, the Holy Father’s journey home in April was a continuous triumph, and his entrance into Rome was celebrated with frantic demonstrations of delight. He confirmed many of the most valuable of his political reforms, and resumed his old life of charity and devotion. The next ten years of his reign are commonly described as a period of severe reaction. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pius IX. has never been an absolutist, never ceased to favor all true liberty, never believed that nations can be governed in the nineteenth century by the methods which prevailed in the ninth. From his accession down to the present day he has not only been the kindest ruler known to history, but he has invariably granted his people the most liberal institutions and the fullest measure of personal freedom which the incessant activity of the secret conspirators would allow. The enemies of Italian liberty are the dagger and the bayonet. It is mere cant and bigotry to assume that everything calling itself a republic, whatever its true character, is entitled to the sympathy of a free people.

When Charles Albert was defeated by the Austrians, Mazzini declared that the war of the kings had ended and the war of the peoples was about to begin. The war of the peoples had failed in its turn, and now the secret societies went back to a conspiracy of the kings. They found Victor Emanuel a more useful instrument than his father, and with him they made a compact whose terms we can gather plainly enough from the event. As the destruction of Christianity was the avowed purpose of the secret societies from the very beginning, so the first service which Sardinia must render them in payment for the crown of Italy was a systematic attack upon the church in the Sardinian territory. The method of these attacks is always the same. They begin by silencing the clergy, dispersing the religious orders, and giving an anti-religious character to public education. In Sardinia the government went so far as to found a state school of heretical theology, and to impose it upon the episcopate by force. In the university of Turin it was taught that the state is omnipotent over the church, that the temporal power of the Pope is incompatible with the spiritual, that marriage cannot be proved a sacrament; and the government prohibited the appointment of any clergyman to a benefice who had not followed the condemned theological course at this university. For warning their clergy against such heresies the bishops were imprisoned and their revenues were seized. Priests were arrested for preaching “insubordination.” Convents were suppressed without warning, and even without law. Nuns were turned into the streets in the middle of the night. Clerics were pressed into the army. Religious communities engaged in teaching were treated with especial rigor. Church property was confiscated and priests were reduced to beggary. Thus so early as 1849 did the Sardinian government join the pagan conspiracy, and lend itself for a price to the work of emancipating the people from all religious belief.

It was not until 1859 that the plot was ripe, and then, to the dismay of the great Catholic party in France, an accomplice of Victor Emanuel presented himself in the person of Napoleon III. There was no reason to wonder at such an unnatural alliance. Napoleon, whose empire was built upon revolution, and who held despotic power by the double and doubly false titles of massacre and counterfeit suffrage, was always treacherous to the Pope. After the fall of the Mazzinian republic in 1848 he attempted to impose upon the Holy Father a policy in the interest of the revolutionists, and that was the cause of the Pope’s long delay at Portici; Pius IX. would not return to Rome until he could return without conditions. He declared that he “would sooner go to America; he knew the way thither already: or he would take refuge in Austria.”[46] Napoleon was compelled to yield. Then came the demonstration of Count Cavour at the Congress of 1856, made, undoubtedly, with Napoleon’s connivance. Cavour hurled “the Roman question” into the midst of European politics by his proposal for the separation of the Legations from the Pontifical States, and their government by a lay vicar; and although the subject was postponed, the mere discussion of it served a practical purpose. “It is the first spark,” said Count Cavour’s own newspaper, “of an irresistible conflagration.” Count Rayneval, the French representative at Rome, refuted the charges brought by Cavour against the papal administration, but his able report to the Minister of Foreign Affairs was suppressed in Paris, and only saw the light through the pages of a London daily paper. Two years later (January 14, 1858) Orsini made his attempt upon Napoleon’s life, and from his prison he warned the emperor that the Carbonari held him to his ancient engagements. “So long as Italy shall not be independent the tranquillity of Europe _and that of your majesty_ will be but a chimera.” From this time there was no more mystery about Napoleon’s purposes. He had a long private conference with Cavour at Plombières, and on the 1st of January, 1859, he made the famous unfriendly remark to the Austrian ambassador at the Tuileries which proved the signal for the Franco-Italian war. A month later appeared his pamphlet, _Napoleon III. and Italy_, in which he denounced the civil government of the Pope as incompatible with modern civilization, and proposed anew the double-headed confederation of Gioberti, with the King of Sardinia as military chief and the Sovereign Pontiff as honorary president. And Piedmont, in the meantime, played her part astutely. For a long time her agents had been busy among the Italian states. A circular signed by Garibaldi, who was now a general in the Piedmontese service, gave instructions to the conspirators:

Footnote 46:

Villefranche.

“1. Before hostilities have commenced between Piedmont and Austria you are to rise with the cry of 'Italy for ever! Victor Emanuel for ever!’ 2. Wherever the insurrection triumphs, he among you who enjoys most public esteem and confidence is to take the military and civil command, with the title of provisional commissioner, acting for King Victor Emanuel, and to retain it until the arrival of a commissioner sent by the Sardinian government.” But it is unnecessary to quote proofs of the plot; Mazzini himself laid it bare when he attacked the government on account of its prosecution of the authors of the abortive revolt at Genoa, in 1857: “Monarchico-Piedmontese committees exist at Rome, Bologna, Florence, and several cities of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom; and there are secondary centres in several other towns. I could name to you the persons, several of them deputies, who are the agents between the poor dupes and the personages of the government.” In Florence the plot against the Grand Duke of Tuscany, which resulted in his abdication after his troops had been bribed to desert him, was matured in the very house of the Sardinian ambassador. In Parma the Sardinian agents instigated the expulsion of the Duchess Regent, who was yet so popular that her subjects spontaneously recalled her, and Victor Emanuel had to drive her out a second time. In the Papal States the Sardinians stood upon no ceremony, but, when the insurrection took place, they boldly marched in troops to sustain it.

Before the peace of Villafranca all Central Italy was in the hands of the Piedmontese commissioners. By the terms of that treaty these commissioners were to be withdrawn. The amazement of Europe, therefore, was profound when, even before the signatures to the convention were dry, Victor Emanuel was found to be setting up provisional governments in Parma, Modena, Tuscany, and the Romagna, and getting ready to play the favorite French farce of the plebiscitum. As it was managed in one state it was managed in all. The Romagna has a million of inhabitants. The Sardinian agents prepared voting lists, restricted to the large towns where the revolutionary party was strong and bold, and put on these lists only eighteen thousand names. Of these not more than a third voted. The total vote for and against annexation represented, therefore, only three-fifths of one per cent. of the population. And this is called a plebiscitum! Nevertheless, on the 18th of March, 1860, the Legations Parma, Modena, and Tuscany were declared annexed, like Lombardy, to the Sardinian monarchy, and the king, assured of the countenance of the emperor, made preparations for the invasion of Umbria and the Marches.[47] It was a comparatively simple process; in this case Sardinia frankly took the coveted provinces by force of arms. The expedition was concerted at Chambery between Napoleon and the Piedmontese general Cialdini, and in closing the interview the emperor is reported to have said, _Faites, mais faites vite!_—almost the very words which our Lord spoke to Judas: “What thou doest, do quickly.” On the tenth anniversary of this interview Napoleon, a prisoner in the power of the great German Empire which he had done more than any other one man to create, ceased to reign.

Footnote 47:

When the Pope launched a bull of excommunication against the
spoliators of his territory, Napoleon forbade its publication in
France. He allowed the official and radical journals, however, to
publish a forged bull, and to ridicule and denounce at pleasure the
extravagant language which it imputed to the Holy Father. The bishops
tried to expose the forgery, but the press was closed to them.

We are near the end. A fortnight after Sedan the Piedmontese army, 60,000 strong, appeared before the walls of Rome to seize the last of the temporal possessions of the Holy See. Defence was impossible. The pontiff instructed his little army to resist only until a breach had been made in the walls. Then he went to pray in the venerable Lateran basilica, the mother-church of Christendom. He visited the neighboring chapel of the Scala Santa, and made on his knees the painful ascent of the twenty-eight marble steps from the judgment-hall of Pilate which our Saviour’s blessed feet had pressed. In the little chapel at the top he implored the pity and protection of Almighty God for the afflicted church. Then, followed by the acclamations of a crowd of affectionate subjects, and blessing them as he went, he entered the Vatican, and Rome has never seen him since.

The troops of Victor Emanuel made themselves masters of Rome the next day, September 20, 1870. The king followed them in time and established his court in the Quirinal. And since then, in Rome as in the rest of Italy, the pagan revolution has gone steadily forward to the suppression of Christian education, of monastic and charitable orders, and, as far as possible, of all divine worship. When Garibaldi rode on horseback into the church of Monte Rotondo and ordered his prisoners to cover their heads, which they had bared out of respect to the sacred place, he only gave emphasis to the sentiment which pervades the whole movement. The convents are empty; the churches are desolate; libraries are scattered; great seminaries of theology are broken up; Christian education has been driven from the school-room; there are hundreds of priests who go hungry and in rags; there are nuns in Rome whose whole income is three cents a day; the bishops have been robbed of everything and live on the charity of the Pope; pious processions are prohibited; members of religious orders who survive the suppression of their houses are forbidden to receive novices; the father-general of the Jesuits is an exile from Rome, and his nearest representative lives as a private lay person in hired lodgings. Today a bill is pending in the Italian parliament, and has already passed one branch of it, to punish bishops, priests, religious writers, and journalists for what is styled “disturbing the public conscience” and the “peace of families.” The Italian government has pretended to guarantee the freedom and independence of the Sovereign Pontiff in the exercise of all his spiritual functions, but now it proposes to prevent the publication of his encyclicals and allocutions; to condemn him not only to perpetual imprisonment, but to perpetual silence; to prosecute the bishops if they transmit his instructions to the faithful, and the priests if they preach against any heresy sanctioned by the state. To censure, by speech or writing, any law or institution approved by the civil authority is to be treated as a felony calculated to “disturb consciences.” Our divine Lord passed the whole period of his ministry on earth in disturbing consciences; the history of Christianity, the labors of missionaries and reformers, are nothing else than a record of the disturbance of consciences. But the pagan revolution has no toleration for Christianity. Close the confessionals, tear down the pulpits, burn the Bibles, break the tables of the law; the sleeping conscience of Italy must not be disturbed.

Thus the conspiracy of the kings has moved on towards the subjugation of the church. The secret societies are only using the kingdom of Italy and the despotic empire of Germany for the accomplishment of their anti-religious purpose, and when that is done the kings, in their turn, will be the victims of the deep-laid and long-cherished plot for the abolition of “subordination” and worship. Let nobody imagine that they are inactive or that they are satisfied with national unity. Mazzini never pretended that their work was done when a king was set up in the Pope’s palace. He died conspiring against Victor Emanuel and urging Italy to press on to “the goal of the revolution.” Nor did his projects die with him. The anniversary of his death was celebrated last March by democratic demonstrations all over Italy which the government was helpless to suppress. “A funeral march, a national hymn, and a few short, earnest words from some well-known and esteemed local republicans and _capi-popolo_,” says an English liberal journal, “declaring the commemorative ceremony to be not merely a token of remembrance, but 'a _promise_,’ was all that took place; but the fact that these things did take place on the same day throughout the whole of Italy is one of great significance. In many instances the authorities did their best previously, by warnings and even by threats, to prevent these demonstrations, but we have heard of no case in which they ventured upon any attempt to put them down by force.”[48] The flags which the associations carried were “free from the stain,” to use the popular phrase—that is to say, they did not show the arms of Savoy; and the letters read and addresses delivered spoke openly of a “time for action” which was yet to come. And while the clubs were thus parading and declaiming the following circular was distributed among the rank and file of the Italian army:

Footnote 48:

_The Examiner_ (London), March 31, 1877.

“Free citizens! Brother Carbonari! Every sect, every family, every
individual is free to investigate, as best he may, the road which
leads to heaven; but it belongs to the Carboneria to indicate and
open up the way to the kingdom of liberty, to the triumph of
justice, to social amelioration upon earth. The Carboneria, in its
principles, in its development, and in the means which it proposes
to employ for its purpose—_i.e._, for the amelioration, economic and
moral, of mankind, for the diffusion of liberty, and for the perfect
equalization of society—is the one association which can boast of
the right of nature and the most perfect justice. All other
associations, because based on privilege and ambition, either miss
their aim or become useless. Persuaded of this, the apostles of our
principle have devoted themselves to propagating and defending it
with ardor, defying dangers, condemnations, and calumnies of the
most deadly kind. Many were the acquisitions which our association
made in a short time in every branch of social science, in the arts,
and in commerce, and now all our aspirations are turned towards you
who compose the army—the material force of nations. Soldiers!
remember that you are sons of the people, free citizens, and at the
same time the obstacle to the common weal and the hope of all. Do
you wish to serve tyranny, privilege—in a word, the oppressors?
Remember that you are sons of the people; that force alone dragged
you from the bosom of your desolated families; that, slaves of a
stern discipline, you are forced to shoot down the oppressed, to
protect the oppressors; and do not forget that to-morrow, wounded
and crippled, you will return to the ranks of the people whom you
charged with the bayonet, and that in your turn you will then be
charged and oppressed. Remember that before being slaves you were
free, and that before serving the despot you were citizens. The
Carboneria expects you among its ranks; come and range yourselves by
the side of thousands of other brave ones, officers and graduates,
who do not disdain to stake everything to preserve themselves true
sons of the people, generous citizens of our common country.”

II.

We have endeavored to follow thus far the progress of that general revolt of the world against the divine authority which has marked the pontificate of Pius IX. and embraces the Holy Father’s heroic life of constancy and suffering. But simultaneously there has gone on a contrary movement—a clearer development and consolidation of the authority of God’s church over the minds of the faithful; and herein we trace his glorious life of triumphant action. For his attitude towards the revolution has not been one of mere passive resistance. He has fought a stout fight for the imperilled truth. It is a time of corruption and unbelief, when the world is lifted up with satanic pride to defy Heaven, and society is sacrificing all the guarantees of order, and even the elect are sorely tempted. History will record that the great mission of Pope Pius IX. was to expose the fallacies and illusions of these evil days, to stamp every error as it arose with the reprobation of the infallible judge, and, after empires, and kingdoms, and republics have been racked by a century of the pagan revolt, to prepare again the foundations of Christian civilization. “God has laid on me,” said he to the great assembly of bishops in 1867, “the duty to declare the truths on which Christian society is based, and to condemn the errors which undermine its foundations. And I have not been silent. In the Encyclical of 1864, and in that which is called the Syllabus, I declared to the world the dangers which threaten society and I condemned the falsehoods which assail its life. To you, venerable brethren, I now appeal to assist me in this conflict with error. On you I rely for support. I am aged and alone, praying on the mountain, and you, the bishops of the church, are come to hold up my arms.” “There is perhaps hardly any pontiff,” says Cardinal Manning, “who has governed the church with more frequent exercises of supreme authority than Pius IX.”; and surely there is something magnificent in the courage with which he has met every attack of the world by a new and bolder assertion of the everlasting truths against which the world is in arms. There is not a characteristic heresy of the time for which we Catholics cannot find in the utterances of this great pontiff a complete antidote; there is not a loss inflicted upon the church by her enemies for which we cannot trace a compensation in some clearer recognition of her spiritual power, some sublime restatement of her sovereign authority. Our Holy Father has healed divisions, abolished national and doctrinal parties within the pale of the church, and displayed to the universe the household of Christ one not only in the bonds of faith, but in unity of sympathies. Four times he has summoned the bishops to meet him at the tomb of the apostle. In 1854 more than two hundred bishops and cardinals assembled for the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception—an act which, besides its importance in a doctrinal sense, had a special significance as illustrating the supreme authority of the see of Peter. In 1862, just after the first spoliation of the temporalities of the Papacy by Victor Emanuel, two hundred and sixty-five bishops assembled in Rome for the canonization of the martyrs of Japan, and their meeting, both for the circumstances under which it was summoned and the strong terms in which the prelates expressed their union with the Holy See and their absolute submission to its teachings, made a profound impression throughout Christendom. Five years later the revolution had made immense progress; yet in the midst of political disturbance the world not only saw five hundred bishops gather at Rome to celebrate the centenary of St. Peter’s martyrdom, and again to testify their devotion to Peter’s successor, but it heard the announcement of a general council, the first in three hundred years, called at a time when to the unaided human eye the papal throne seemed tottering to its fall. Here was an inspiring example of faith and Christian courage!

Cardinal Manning’s admirable sketch of the history of the Vatican Council,[49] now in course of publication, shows the reasons for calling that grand assembly, and the reasons especially for the definition of infallibility, its supreme and most glorious achievement; and it brings out in clear light the fact that it was with Pius himself that the idea of the council originated. If it could ever be said that a general council was the work of one man, the Council of the Vatican might be called the crowning work of the long life of Pius IX.—one which alone would place him among the most illustrious of all the Roman pontiffs, and make his reign a remarkable era in the history of the Catholic Church. The circumstances of the time which give such immense importance to the convocation of this council are summarized in the opinions of the cardinals to whom the Pope submitted the question as early as 1864, and we find an excellent synopsis of them in the papers by Cardinal Manning already cited. “The special character of the age,” say their eminences, “is the tendency of a dominant party of men to destroy all the ancient Christian institutions, the life of which consists in a supernatural principle, and to erect upon their ruins and with their remains a new order founded on natural reason alone.... From these principles follows the exclusion of the church and of revelation from the sphere of civil society and of science; and, further, from this withdrawal of civil society and of science from the authority of revelation spring the naturalism, rationalism, pantheism, socialism, communism of these times. From these speculative errors flows in practice the modern revolutionary liberalism which consists in the supremacy of the state over the spiritual jurisdiction of the church, over education, marriage, consecrated property, and the temporal power of the head of the church.” These and a multitude of other prevalent errors Pius IX. had condemned in the Syllabus and Encyclical which Cardinal Manning elsewhere refers to as “among the greatest acts of this pontificate,” summing up the declarations of many years, and giving them “a new promulgation and a sensible accession of power over the minds not only of the faithful, but even of opponents, by the concentrated force and weight of their application.”[50] But it was expedient that the declaration should be published again with the united voice of the whole episcopate joined to its head. Thus the council was almost unanimously approved as a sovereign remedy for the disorders of the time, an encouragement for the faithful, a cure for dissensions, an antidote for evil tendencies within the church, an impulse to the new and nobler life which even amid the political and social confusion had already begun to spring up among the Catholic peoples. And so, even while the pagan revolution was preparing its last assault upon the pontifical throne, an astonished world witnessed this most majestic demonstration of the authority, the unity, and the power of the church, and the whole body of the faithful were filled with courage and fresh enthusiasm. Driven from his capital, robbed, and insulted, the captive of the Vatican, whose voice rings out clear and firm above the din of the century, whose strong arm sustains, whose saintly example inspires, is yet victor over the world in the council and the Syllabus.

Footnote 49:

_The Nineteenth Century_ (London), March and April, 1877.

Footnote 50:

_Petri Privilegium._ London. 1871.

It would be pleasant, if space allowed, to follow the course of his beautiful private life. It is a model of devotion and simplicity. In his great palace he occupies only a plain bed-chamber with a bare stone floor, and a working-cabinet with little furniture except a table and two chairs. He rises, summer and winter, at half-past five. He says Mass, and hears a second Mass of thanksgiving; or if sickness prevents him from celebrating the Holy Sacrifice, he does not fail to receive communion. His hours of work are long and regular. His fare is plain, even to meagreness. Every day he takes exercise in the Vatican gardens, and one of his favorite resorts is a beautiful alley of orange-trees, where the pigeons come to feed from his hand. One day he was discovered with three cardinals, playing “hide and seek” in the gardens with a little boy. Yet with all his gentleness he has a keen and caustic wit. The author of a pious biography sent his book to the Pope for approval. The pontiff read till he came to these words: “Our saint triumphed over all temptations, but there was one snare which he could not escape: he married”; and then he threw the book from him. “What!” said he, “shall it be written that the church has six sacraments and one snare?” Of a Catholic diplomatist whose conduct and professions were at variance he said: “I do not like these accommodating consciences. If that man’s master should order him to put me in jail, he would come on his knees to tell me I must go, and his wife would work me a pair of slippers.” During the French occupation of Rome a certain French colonel was guilty of so gross an offence to the Pope’s authority that the Holy Father demanded his recall. Before his departure he had the effrontery to present himself at the Vatican and ask for a number of small favors, ending with a request for the Pope’s autograph. The Pontiff wrote on a card the words which our Lord addressed to Judas in the garden, “_Amice, ad quid venisti?_” (“Friend, wherefore hast thou come hither?”), and the colonel, who did not understand Latin, showed it to all his friends as a testimonial of the Pope’s regard, until somebody unkindly supplied him with the translation. It is the etiquette of the Vatican that carriages with only one horse must not enter the inner court. This rule was enforced one day in 1867 against the Prussian ambassador, Count von Arnim, and Bismarck, for purposes of his own, endeavored to make a diplomatic scandal of the transaction, instructing the ambassador to close the legation and quit Rome instantly unless he was allowed to drive with one horse to the very foot of the papal staircase. But Bismarck was no match for Pius IX. The Pope caused Cardinal Antonelli to write that “His Holiness, taking compassion on the difficulties of the diplomatic body, would in future allow the representatives of the great powers to approach his presence with one quadruped _of any sort_”—avec _un quadrupède quelconque_. It is believed that the Prussian minister never availed himself of this permission in its full extent.

The newspapers bring us bad news from time to time of the Pope’s health. Let us not be alarmed. He comes of a long-lived family. His grandfather died at ninety-three, his father at eighty-three, his mother at eighty-eight, his eldest brother at ninety. “I am in the hands of God,” he said to an English gentleman; “I shall bless my hour when it comes. But, my son, when I take up certain newspapers nowadays, and do not find in them an account of my last illness and my end, it always seems to me as if the editors had forgotten something.”

A VISION OF THE COLOSSEUM, A.D. 1873

O God, the heathens are come into thy inheritance, they have defiled
thy holy temple: they have made Jerusalem as a place to keep
fruit.—_Ps._ lxxviii.

I had been idly reading, through the quiet afternoon,
A poet’s passionate verses, falling softly into tune
Of even, measured rhythm, and of fine, melodious words,
Rippling along with easy grace like careless song of birds;
Now warblings, half unconscious, like the happy songster’s trill
Poured from some wind-swayed bough when all the woods are still;
Now shriller notes that rose above harsh, grating sounds of war,
Loud clarion-notes, above the drums, proclaiming peace afar—
Loud pæan sounds triumphant that Italy was free,
United, and one mighty realm from smiling sea to sea;
From Sicily’s smoke-crowned peak to Savoy’s Alpine chain
One flag met every rambling breeze that breathed o’er hill and
plain;
And haughty Rome, in truth, the Cæsar’s city now once more,
The perilous reign of Peter passed for ever safely o’er.
“_Io!_ _triumphe!_ onward! All ye guarding eagles, come!
And with its ancient glory fill your old imperial home.”

I, sighing, closed the volume. Ah! for me how sadly dim
The poet’s glowing setting of pale Freedom’s Roman hymn,
Whose music, as I heard it, only direst discord made.
The martial beat of rattling drum, the trumpet’s mellowing shade,
Hid all the sweeter utterance of a happy people’s voice
Or sound of pealing church-bells bidding kindly skies rejoice.
I heard above the loudest note the dull, persistent sound
Of forging iron fetters—even riveted while crowned,
Sweet Freedom saw, indignant, built her frail and crumbling throne
Of consecrated marble newly stolen, stone by stone.

“_Io!_ _triumphe!_ onward! But the shouting could not drown
The psalm of homeless friars, weary exiles, marching down,
Chapel and cell denied them; for of these the state has need.
And from the cross’s folly must St. Francis’ sons be freed!
I heard in plaintive chorus nuns sad _Miserere_ sing,
As ceased for them for ever their old convent’s sheltering—
Let them seek aid from Him on high whose faithful sheep they are;
The horses of the hero-king seek not their help so far!

I heard, above th’ exultant fife, the loud-voiced auctioneer
Strike down the church’s garment 'mid the idle jest and jeer
Of souls that trembled not to see the sacred chalice borne
By hands that would have helped of old to press the twisted thorn,
Who would for thirty pieces once their loving Lord have sold—
Why not his spouse’s raiment for twice that, glittering gold?
I heard the heavy rustle of quaint, figured tapestry
By pious fingers cunning wrought in days of chivalry.
Loud chimed the strangers’ clanking coin that paid the moneyed
worth,
But faint the modern anthem’s notes proclaiming Freedom’s birth!

Of wandering peoples, too, I heard the tired and restless tread,
Their little harvest grown too scant for even daily bread,
Fair Freedom’s added burden grown too heavy to be borne;
While Italy, sad-hearted, watched her children sail forlorn
To seek across the western sea the life she could not give;
For her cannon must be cast, and a nation she must live.
A nation crowned! Ah! royal state is very heavy dole;
All too quick the world’s pulse beats to heed plaint of weary soul.
Still with triumphant pæans did the poet’s verses ring:
“Shout, Italy, our Italy! all-joyous anthems sing!
Clang out, sad-voiced Roman bells! hail Piedmont’s Victor,—king!”

“_Miserere, miserere_,”
Sounded church and convent steeple;
“In thy mercy spare us, Saviour,
Leading back thy erring people.”

And as the clanging belfries trembled strangely with the sound,
The _Miserere_ drifting to the peoples gathered round,
Methought the quiet afternoon had faded from my sight,
And I, beneath a Roman sky, alone with deepening night,
Stood in the Colosseum’s shade, with many a wondering thought,
No touch of moonlight falling on the walls the Romans wrought;
The calm stars, gazing earthward, seemed to give nor light nor
shade;
No torches’ fitful splendor through the lonely arches played;
And, even as the shade was deep, so deep the silence fell,
So calm the night it scarce could wake the wind-harp’s sighing
swell;
No beaded _aves_ drifted from cowled pilgrims of the cross,
No murmur of atoning prayers pleading the nations’ loss;
No tourists’ idle laughter broke the silence of the scene,
While the shrouding arches sheltered my thoughts of what had been.

Years, centuries had vanished as my wingèd thoughts flew fast
To days when Rome imperial o’er the world her robe had cast;
O’er the wild, barbarian legions I saw her eagles shine,
While her nobles quaffed Greek learning in draughts of Grecian wine—
Expounding, too, with easy art, the Christians’ foolish faith:
How traitorous to Cæsar’s state was every Christian breath.
And then I saw the glitter of their perfumed robes no more,
As gleaming wings of seraphs stroked my eyelids softly o’er.

Then I heard the sweet intoning of the Christians’ matin psalm,
And I saw them lowly kneeling before the mystic Lamb:
Maid patrician bent in prayer with the dark slave of the East,
Egypt’s sage, Juda’s captive, meeting at the angels’ feast.
Before that holy altar all one sacred likeness wear—
His who, on the cross outstretched, all our sin and weakness bare:
Subtle Greek before the cross laying down his pride of art;
Falling meekly peace divine on some savage Scythian heart;
Hapless Jew, haughty Northman, Roman proud, and cowering slave,
Bound together by the blood of Him who died all men to save;
One by the bond of suffering, one in the voice of prayer
That rose with solemn sweetness through the catacombs’ dull air:

“_Miserere, miserere_,”
Rose the sad and earnest pleading;
“In thy mercy spare us, Saviour,
Unto thee the nations leading.”

Lo! as entranced I listened, there mingled with the song
A sound as if of many steps passing the streets along,
And the ancient Roman arches 'neath which I dreaming stood
Grew peopled with the city’s fierce and restless multitude.
What noble game should fitly while the idle hours away,
What gracious pastime fill with joy the Roman holiday?
Should some strong-limbed barbarian lay his life down in its
strength,
That the day for Roman matrons should have less of weary length?
Nay, daintier sight the maiden tells, binding her mistress’ zone:
To-day, by Cæsar’s lions, Christian maid shall be o’erthrown!

Within the dread arena pale and firm the martyr stood—
A strange and dazzling sight she seemed amid the soldiers rude;
So slight the little, childish form, so young the radiant face,
Whence streams of holy glory flooded all the pagan place;
The happy lips half-parted with a love that fain would speak,
And the eyes to heaven uplifted beneath the forehead meek—
The eyes whence earth had vanished, heaven’s shadow resting there,
The glimmer of its shining falling softly on her hair.
Ah! happy maid, that, listening, heard above the tumult wild
The loved voice of the Father calling home his little child;
The voice of the Belovèd bidding sweet his loved one come:
“Arise, my Dove, my Beautiful”—it sounded o’er the hum
Of wondering crowds who could not guess whence came the martyr’s
strength,
Her heart with joy nigh breaking that it should rest at length
On His whose love had bought it with a price exceeding far
The spoils of all the nations gracing Cæsar’s triumph-car.
One little grain of incense still might save the martyr’s life,
But one little breath for Cæsar still win release from strife—
Unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, to God the life he gave;
Less duty could she offer Him who died that life to save?
And then the vision faded, and once more I stood alone
Where thought of sainted martyrs seemed to consecrate each stone,
And stars as calmly watching o’er as once in days bygone
When Cæsar’s dearest pastime won his slaves a deathless crown.

“_Miserere, miserere_,”
Seemed the night-wind lowly sighing;
“Call thy erring sheep, O Saviour,
Dearest Lord of love undying!”

Soft then I saw advancing through the darkness’ mighty shade
A tall and stately figure in wide, trailing robes arrayed,
The fair, white arms in longing stretched, as if in woe to seek
The comfort of the broken heart, the strength of all the weak—
Christ’s blessèd cross with arms outspread, as if to mutely plead
For mercy for the sinner, from tender hearts love’s meed;
Of mightiest love the symbol true, the link ’twixt heaven and earth,
The sign by which earth’s frailest one is cleansed for heavenly
birth.
In vain! No craving hand can touch that sacred symbol now,
Its holy vision bring no rest to world-tossed, aching brow;
The modern Cæsar has no need to mark where martyrs fell:
“Unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s”—that word they kept too well.
And murmuring monks but echo, their chaplets telling o’er,
The words these stones repeated in the Roman days of yore;
To earthly science dearer far the walls the pagans built
Than the precious blood of martyrs for love of Jesus spilt.
Perchance beneath these stones might lie rare treasures of old Rome—
The cross in Christian kingdom must not wander from its home!

“_Miserere, miserere_,”
Seemed the very stones outcrying;
“In thy mercy spare the nations.
Heed, O God! the prisoners’ sighing.”

A sound of low lamenting then filled all the silent place,
Whose darkness won unearthly light from out the stranger’s face—
A face so fair not Paphos’ queen could claim a grace so rare;
Ah! only she, the much-desired, such peerless mien could wear.
And low I heard her murmuring: “Ah! me, woe, woe is me!
So weary are my ears with sound of shouts that speak me free.
Free! Am I free? Upon my head rests weight of royal crown,
And Piedmont’s soldiers guard me, fearing lest I lay it down.
Italy! Am I Italy? That name indeed I bear;
And among the nations standing a nation’s crown I wear—
Proud empires that salute me fair, green lands beyond the sea,
Crying aloud: 'Shout, Italy! Thank Victor thou art free;
Thy peoples shall no longer 'neath the tyrant’s scourge bend low,
And, too, thy seemly garment no unseemly rent shall show;
Among thy peers come thou once more to take thy place and name,
Fair Southern queen, King Victor has ta’en away thy shame.’

“O gold-haired northern peoples! know ye not the sound of chains?
Ne’er heard ye clink of German spur along my Lombard plains?
O rosy-cheeked barbarians! do ye deem that I am free
Because my rulers speed you when ye prate of liberty!’
When ye the wide arms shorten of the world-redeeming cross
Since too far its shadow falls, and ye deem that shade your loss!
Far, far across the western seas I hear their poets sing,
While Freedom’s joy-bells pealing, loud, exulting anthems ring:
'Rise up, dear Italy unchained; thank Victor thou art free,
And bend, oppressed, at Peter’s throne no more thy trembling knee.
Thy sons shall waste in convent cell no more their manhood’s
strength;
See! open wide, their prison-doors: free men they are at length!
Dark tyranny and priestcraft prostrate fall before thy king;
Thy children freemen rise once more beneath his sheltering.’