The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 17 · Chapter 16Holiness to the Lord! (2)
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"'Before the benediction of God descends upon you, on the rest of my people, and, I say it again, on all Italy, I pray you to be of one mind, and to keep the faith which you have sworn to me, the Pontiff.'
"At these words the silence of deep feeling was broken by a sudden thunder of acclamation, 'Yes, I swear,' and Pius proceeded:
"'I warn you, however, against the raising of certain cries, that are not of the people, but of a few individuals, and against making any such requests to me as are incompatible with the sanctity of the Church; for these I cannot, I may not, and I will not grant. This being understood, with my whole soul, I bless you.'"
Deeds followed words; the Ministry was changed; five laymen were admitted into it, and it was intimated that a constitution would be granted resembling those in other States. Then came the news of the disasters at Paris, and everything was precipitated. On March 10th the Ministry was again changed, only three ecclesiastics being now admitted into it; and on the 14th the new constitution, or "Fundamental Statute," was proclaimed. It instituted a Legislature in two branches, the High Council and the Council of Deputies, the members of the former being appointed by the Pope, and those of the latter being chosen by popular vote in the ratio, as nearly as might be, of one to every thirty thousand souls. All citizens were voters who paid twelve crowns a year in direct taxes or had property amounting to three hundred crowns; to these were added all members of colleges and honorary graduates, and all persons holding office in the communes and municipalities. The Legislature was to be convoked every year, both Councils were to choose their own officers, and their sessions were to be public, except on extraordinary occasions when they might of their own accord prefer secrecy. Freedom of debate and vote was guaranteed, and the members of both Houses were protected from arrest, even for notoriously criminal acts, during the session, except by consent of the Council to which they belonged.
They were to have authority to make laws on all subjects, excepting ecclesiastical matters and the canons and discipline of the Church, but including the imposition of taxes; the Pope, however, like most monarchs, reserved to himself the right of negativing a law. All discussions, also, of the diplomatico-religious relations of the Holy See with foreign powers were forbidden. Money bills were to originate in the lower house, and direct taxes could be granted for only a year. The Deputies had a right to impeach ministers, who, if they were laymen, were to be tried by the High Council; if ecclesiastics, by the Sacred College. The unlimited right of petition to the lower house was assured and ministers were responsible for every ministerial act; they had the right of sitting and debating, but not of voting, in both Councils. A portion of the revenue of the State, for the support of the cardinals, the ecclesiastical congregations, and generally for the transaction of purely ecclesiastical business, was to be secured to the Pope, and to be borne on the estimates every year.
The judges were to be irremovable after they had held office for three years; and all persons were declared equal in the sight of the law. Extraordinary commissions or tribunals for the trial of offences were abolished. All property, whether of individuals or corporations, whether civil or ecclesiastical, was to be held subject to its equal part of the burdens of the State; and to all bills imposing taxes, the Pope would annex, of his own authority, a special waiver of the ecclesiastical exemption. The administrations of the Provinces and the communes were placed in the hands of their respective inhabitants. The Government (or political) censorship was abolished, but the ecclesiastical censorship was retained.
Such is a general outline of the Roman Constitution spontaneously granted to his subjects by Pius IX. Its merits, in all civil or political matters, are certainly equal, if not superior, to those of the English Constitution, from which in great part it was borrowed; its faults are precisely those which resulted necessarily from the Pope's double character, as temporal sovereign of the Roman States and as head of the Catholic Church throughout the world. It was not within the province or at the discretion of Pius to alter the tenure by which he held his throne, to change the fundamental principles of the Church or to abolish his ecclesiastical dominion. He granted to his subjects all that was in his power to grant as their temporal sovereign. His purely ecclesiastical relations and duties did not concern them, or concerned them only so far as they were members of the great body of Catholic believers in all lands. The College of Cardinals must choose the Pope, and must choose one of their own number; this is not a law of the Roman States, but a law of the Catholic Church. Pius could not abrogate it; and if he had been inclined to grant everything to his people by divesting himself of the last rag of his sovereignty, the only consequence would have been that the cardinals must have chosen another pope in his place, who might undo all that Pius had accomplished.
These are obvious and necessary considerations; and the Pope expressly recognizes them in the ordinance accompanying the grant of the constitution. "We intend," he says, "to maintain intact our authority in matters that by their nature are related to the Catholic religion and its rule of morals. And this is due from us as a guaranty to the whole of Christendom, that, in the States of the Church reorganized in this new form, nothing shall be derogated from the liberties and rights of the Church herself, and of the Holy See, nor any precedent be established for violating the sacredness of the religion which it is our duty and mission to preach to the whole world, as the only scheme of covenant between God and man, the only pledge of that heavenly benediction by which states subsist and nations flourish."
Now, it is worthy of note that neither this constitution nor any of the acts of Pius under it was ever complained of by any party among the Pope's subjects except in regard to these ecclesiastical reservations which were forced from him by the very nature of the office that he held. The constitutionalists, indeed the moderate reformers, the party of Balbo and Gioberti and D'Azeglio, which comprised most of the educated and reflecting persons in the State, seem to have been entirely satisfied with it as a whole, or as it was. So also were the unthinking populace, who received it with shouts of exultation, so long as they were not moved by the arts of a party who would not be satisfied with having a good pope, but were bent upon having no pope at all. This was the party of Mazzini, the revolutionists as distinguished from the reformers—not strong at first either in numbers or credit, as we have seen, but who made up for all deficiencies by their zeal and activity—who were determined to establish a republic, and who cared nothing for the embarrassments of the Pope's situation as head of the Church, of indeed for the Church itself. They complained—and with reason, too, upon their principles—of these ecclesiastical reservations; and they made out of them their chief weapon of attack upon the Pope's government, though they did not profit so much by the use of it as by the evident unwillingness of Pius to rush into a war with Austria for the purpose of giving the sovereignty of Lombardy to Charles Albert, a measure to which he was averse, because he thought such a conflict would be detrimental to the interests of the Church over which he presided.
The world's future judgment of Pius will depend upon its belief of the sincerity with which he acted in thus allowing nothing but his religious duties and his position as the head of the Church to limit his concessions of political privileges to his subjects. On this point, it is well to hear the opinion of Farini, who, as one of the Mamiani Ministry and as employed to mediate between them and the Pope, because much loved and trusted by him, seems peculiarly qualified to form one without undue bias on either side:
"Pius IX had applied himself to political reform, not so much for the reason that his conscience as an honorable man and a most pious sovereign enjoined it, as because his high view of the papal office prompted him to employ the temporal power for the benefit of his spiritual authority. A meek man and a benevolent prince, Pius IX was, as a pontiff, lofty even to sternness. With a soul not only devout, but mystical, he referred everything to God, and respected and venerated his own person as standing in God's place. He thought it his duty to guard with jealousy the temporal sovereignty of the Church, because he thought it essential to the safe-keeping and the apostleship of the faith.
"Aware of the numerous vices of that temporal government, and hostile to all vice and all its agents, he had sought, on mounting the throne, to effect those reforms which justice, public opinion, and the times required. He hoped to give lustre to the papacy by their means, and so to extend and to consolidate the faith. He hoped to acquire for the clergy that credit, which is a great part of the decorum of religion and an efficient cause of reverence and devotion in the people. His first efforts were successful in such a degree that no pontiff ever got greater praise.
"By this he was greatly stimulated and encouraged, and perhaps he gave in to the seduction of applause and the temptations of popularity more than is fitting for a man of decision or for a prudent prince. But when, after a little, Europe was shaken by universal revolution, the work he had commenced was, in his view, marred; he then retired within himself and took alarm.
"In his heart, the pontiff always came before the prince, the priest before the citizen; in the secret struggles of his mind, pontifical and priestly conference always outweighed the conscience of the prince and citizen. And as his conscience was a very timid one, it followed that his inward conflicts were frequent; that hesitation was a matter of course, and that he often took resolutions even about temporal affairs, more from religious intuition or impulse than from his judgment as a man. Added to this, his health was weak and susceptible of nervous excitement—the dregs of his old complaint. From this he suffered most when his mind was most troubled and uneasy; another cause of wavering and changefulness.
"Under the pressure of the extraordinary occurrences throughout Europe early in the spring of 1848, the Pope's new Ministry under the constitution proceeded vigorously and rapidly to give full development and efficiency to that instrument. They also expressed the wish for a firm union of the constitutional thrones of Italy with one another with a view to insuring her independence; and they ordered the papal banners to be decorated with pennons of the Italian tricolor. On March 21st the news of the revolution at Vienna, much magnified by report, arrived, and the excitement of the Roman populace knew no bounds.
"Every bell in the city pealed for joy; from palace and from hovel, from magazine and workshop, the townspeople poured in throngs into the streets and squares; some took to letting off firearms, some to strewing flowers; some hoisted flags on the towers, some decked with them their balconies; everybody was shouting 'Italia! Italia!' and cursing the Empire. In an access of fury, the Austrian arms were torn down, dashed to pieces, and befouled amid the applause of the crowd in spite of the dissuasion of the public functionaries and of prudent persons."
The hostility to the Jesuits now threatened to break out into violence; and for the double purpose of protecting them and appeasing the passions of the mob the Pope consented that the schools which they had superintended should be given into other hands, that their associations should be disbanded and they should be exiled.
"The Government perhaps had no choice, so swiftly and impetuously did the torrent of popular commotion roll. I will not affirm that the Pope and the Government ought to have exposed to the last hazard the security of the State for an ineffectual defence of the fraternity. What I wish to observe is that if there were among the Jesuits men stained with guilt, and mischievous plotters, they ought to have been watched and punished as bad citizens; but it was incompatible with propriety or justice to condemn and punish a religious association, as such, in a place where the Pope held both his own seat and the supreme authority of the Church. None but the Pope had the power to condemn the society as a whole, and no condemnation but his could be just or valid in the opinion and conscience of the Catholics, or produce the desired political effects." On the same day that the Jesuits were expelled, the Pope issued a noble proclamation, breathing the best spirit of religion. The following excerpt is a portion of it:
"Pius Papa IX to the People of the States of Italy—Health and Apostolic Benediction:
"The events which the last two months have witnessed, following and thronging one another in such rapid succession, are no work of man. Woe to him that does not discern the Lord's voice in this blast that agitates, uproots, and rends the cedar and the oak. Woe to the pride of man if he shall refer, these marvellous changes to any human merit or any human fault; if instead of adoring the hidden designs of Providence, whether manifested in the paths of his justice or of his mercy, or of that Providence in whose hands are all the ends of the earth. And we, who are endowed with speech in order to interpret the dumb eloquence of the works of God—we cannot be mute amid the longings, the fears, and the hopes which agitate the minds of our children.
"And first, it is our duty to make known to you that if our hearts had been moved at hearing how, in a part of Italy, the consolations of religion have preceded the perils of battle, and nobleness of mind has been displayed in works of charity, we nevertheless could not and cannot but greatly grieve over the injuries which, in other places, have been done to the ministers of that same religion—injuries, even if contrary to our duty we were silent concerning them, our silence could not hinder from impairing the efficacy of our benedictions.
"Neither can we refrain from telling you that to use victory well is a greater and more difficult achievement than to be victorious. If the present day recalls to you any other period of your history, let the children profit by the errors of their forefathers. Remember that all stability and all prosperity has its main earthly ground in concord; that it is God alone who maketh of one mind them that dwell in a house; that he grants this reward only to the humble and the meek, to those who respect his laws, in the liberty of his church, in the order of society, in charity toward all mankind."
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Shortly afterward another measure, emanating entirely from the Pope, and opposed by the prejudices of the mob, showed that his humane and liberal disposition and enlightened understanding waited for no impulse from without, and for no hope of increased popularity, before doing justice to a long oppressed race. "The friends of social progress were highly gratified by the decision of Pius IX to raze in Rome the walls and gates which shut up the Jews in the Ghetto. He had already, at the commencement of his pontificate, softened some of the rigors with which they were afflicted, and had directed that they might spread beyond that ignominious precinct; nor, however great was the outcry about it among the mob, did he forego the idea of bettering the condition of the followers of the Mosaic law." He was disposed to give them civil rights; and if he did not think of extending his concessions even to political privileges, yet he would give this as the main reason for it, that, in a constitutional country, everyone who enjoys them may rise to the highest stages of power; whereas a pope could not have any save Catholic ministers. In the mean time he raised them out of the abjectness of their isolation, although the Roman vulgar censured him for it bitterly, most of all because it took effect in Holy Week. When it was known in the city that the walls and fastenings of the Ghetto were to be pulled down at night, by order of the Cardinal Vicar, Ciceruacchio hastened with his companions, or subjects, to share in the work; and they shared in it so largely that it seemed as though the thing were effected more as their boon than by the will of the Pope. Pius IX was vexed at this; whether because noise had been made about what he wanted done quietly, or because it was brought about in such a manner that it might seem the popular party had had more to say to it than the authority of the head of religion. Rome fully shared the enthusiasm which was awakened throughout Italy by the entrance of the Piedmontese troops into Lombardy, and by the announcement by Charles Albert that he had drawn the sword in the sacred cause of Italian independence. His proclamation, in the stilted phrase common to such state papers, declared that he relied upon "the assistance of that God who is visibly with us; of that God who has given Pius IX to Italy; of that God who, by such wondrous impulses, has placed her in a condition to act for herself." And if she acted for herself, if her deeds had been commensurate with her glorious words, the Austrian would never again have trodden any portion of the peninsula with the step of a master. But the zeal of the Italians for independence seemed all to evaporate in high-sounding manifestoes, and in a few excesses of the populace in the great cities. The inactivity of the Italian sovereigns may be explained by their imputed treachery or lukewarmness in the cause. But what prevented the people themselves from crowding the camp of Charles Albert with volunteers at a time when not a crowned head in Italy dared offer the least open opposition to such a movement? The King of Naples, sorely against his will, sent his regular army, consisting of about fourteen thousand men, to fight for the cause, and withdrew them in about six weeks, as soon as a base act of treachery had given him the victory at home. General Pepe, their commander, wished to disobey the order and move forward; but "nearly the whole army turned its back on the Po and on him, and moved backward in the direction of the Neapolitan Kingdom." Two hundred volunteers had previously set out from Naples for Upper Italy, under the guidance and at the expense of an enthusiastic woman, the Princess Belgioioso. "She had lived as an exile in France, and was at first enthusiastic for the Giovine Italia; she afterward became averse to it, and sided with Guizot, Duchâtel, and Mignet, her intimate friend. She was well versed—or mixed herself much—in literature, politics, the study of theology, and journalism; a woman that had some of the feelings and anxieties of men, together with all those of her own sex, and who was now travelling through Italy intent upon manly business, but after woman's fashion. Other volunteers afterward started, and a vessel set sail for Leghorn, which carried them, along with the Tenth Regiment of the line." The Sicilians at the same time determined to separate entirely from Naples and the rest of the peninsula; "and thus all the ability and spirit, the arms and wealth, of that powerful island were applied to the effort for insular independence, and drawn off from that for the independence of the nation." From Tuscany there went to this national war "about three thousand volunteers, and perhaps as many more regulars"—a number so small that Farini apologizes for it, and endeavors to prove that it ought "not to be imputed to any lukewarmness in the affection for Italy." The army from the Roman States, which the Pope had set on foot, but hoped to retain as a defensive force within the northern boundary of his dominions, numbered about sixteen thousand, of whom more than half were volunteers. The conduct of the people of Lombardy, who though the conflict raged on their own soil, and their own freedom was immediately at stake, wasted their strength in quarrelling with one another instead of succoring Charles Albert, has long been a topic of wonder and censure. In short, all Italy did not furnish for this sacred war, so long the object of her aspirations and her prayers, a body of volunteers one-fourth as large as the army which the King of Sardinia brought into the field, though it was probable that he was moved from the first only by the hope of personal aggrandizement. He invaded Lombardy with an army of fifty-five thousand men, expecting thereby to win, with the aid of the national enthusiasm, the sceptre of all Italy for himself and his descendants. A terrible disappointment awaited him; instead of glory, shame and defeat were his portion; and having abdicated his paternal throne in despair he died in exile, literally of a broken heart. Pius IX was hardly more fortunate; to him also this fatal war brought dishonor and exile, the loss of the affection of his subjects, and of the admiration of the civilized world. The reluctance of the Pope to engage, when unprovoked, in a war with Austria is no cause for wonder. He earnestly desired the welfare of his people and the independence of his native land; but all his desires were subject to the interests of the Church, of which he was the recognized head throughout Christendom. The republicans in his dominions, including Mazzini and his party, were aware of this reluctance, and determined to make use of it and of the passions of the people in order to get rid of him altogether. No opportunity was lost to compromise him in the war, both in his temporal and ecclesiastical character; and the misfortune of his twofold position did not allow him to resist these machinations with success. General Durando, the commander of the papal forces, issued a flaming proclamation to his army when they passed the Po, announcing to them that their swords were blessed by the venerable head of the Church, and that they should all wear the cross on their bosoms, as beseemed those who were engaged in a holy war. This act naturally gave great uneasiness to the Pope, and Farini censures it as an unwise attempt to obtain the sanctions of religion for merely political objects—the very conduct which the Liberal party had previously censured in their opponents. If Italian minds, he argues, "were not capable of warming with the simple fire of patriotism for the noble and even holy enterprise of liberating Italy from the stranger, it was vain to hope that hearts so frozen up in indifference could kindle with religious faith." In the mean time the Germans, who were speculating about the unity of their own stock and nation and were straining every nerve in that difficult enterprise, could not excuse the desire of independence in the Italians, and contended for the boasted rights of Austria and Germany over the lands and the coasts of Italy, with the people that inhabited them. When it became known in Germany that the pontifical troops were hastening to the legitimate defence of Italy it affected the public feeling generally, and the name of Pius IX was branded with censure, not by laymen only, but by some bishops and high ecclesiastics. Monsignor Viale, nuncio at Vienna, and Monsignor Sacconi, nuncio at Munich, were assiduous and eager in detailing the sinister reports touching Rome and the Pope, and colored them in such a way as to create an apprehension of schism, the most serious one that could rise for a pope—and that pope, too, Pius IX. He had before this been greatly troubled by the proclamation of General Durando; still he had hoped that the Italian League would be shortly concluded, and that, when he had furnished the quota of troops that might be due from him as a temporal sovereign, he would then have been able, in the capacity of pontiff, to use those good offices which he considered requisite to assure the consciences of Catholics.
Even the news of some reverses to the Italian arms in Lombardy failed to awaken a proper feeling among the inhabitants of Central and Southern Italy, and Farini thus censures the slothfulness and vanity of his countrymen: "Few gave credit or importance at the time to this and other sinister intelligence; the greater part of those who beheld the first marvellous smiles of fortune relied upon the star of Italy, and thought the Empire was dismembered. We Italians are too susceptible to the impulses of passion, and of heat in the imagination; with a small matter we are drunken and think to leap over the moon. Deadly intoxication, most deadly fault, that of undervaluing an enemy, which lets our enthusiasm too easily evaporate, and gives him every facility for showing that he is as gallant as we are, and more resolute; that he has much of perseverance and of discipline—qualities more effectual and valuable than simple courage. It comes to this; we must either send about their business the dreams of poets, and educate ourselves in severe and masculine virtues, or must yet remain long in a position to chant many more elegies, to assuage our sorrow, than hymns of triumph; we must either rest assured that with the tenacious, the disciplined, and the resolute only the tenacious, disciplined, and resolute can cope, and must therefore leave off despising the Austrians, and imitate them in their steadiness and their attention to the military spirit; or else we must be doomed to the disgrace of seeing them masters of our country. A stern truth; but the only one that an Italian freeman can utter to Italians free in mind. He who wants compliments and adulation may fling these warning words from him."
The Ministry at Rome, driven onward by the popular clamor, represented to the Pope in strong terms the necessity of sending orders to his army to take an active part in the war; for they had not yet commenced hostilities with the Austrians. A consistory of the cardinals was to be held on April 29th; and it was feared that Pius would take that occasion for declaring that he was averse to the war, thus pacifying the minds of the Catholics in Germany. The allocution of the Pope realized these fears, though it expressed only his wish to remain neutral, "and to embrace all kindreds, peoples, and nations with equal solicitude of paternal affection." But the Ministry resigned in consequence, and great disturbances arose in the city; the populace were not willing themselves to volunteer for the war, but they were determined that the Pope should not continue a man of peace. The Civic Guard was placed under arms, but it was soon found that the soldiers shared the feelings of the people, and no reliance could be placed upon them. Threats were uttered of assassinating the cardinals, and others cried out "to make short work—as they called it—with the government of the priests, those traitors to Italy, and to place Rome under popular sway." To avert bloodshed, the Pope consented to a compromise; he gave up the entire direction of his troops to Charles Albert, and published, of his own accord, and without the knowledge of his ministers, an affecting remonstrance to his people.
Pius also wrote an earnest letter to the Emperor of Austria, entreating him to put a stop to the war by acknowledging the independence of Venetia and Lombardy. "Let not the generous German nation take it ill," he said, "if we invite them to lay resentment aside, and to convert into the beneficial relations of friendly neighborhood a domination which could never be prosperous or noble while it depended solely on the sword." But the prayers of the Pope had now little influence either with the Emperor or with his own subjects; he had long ago forfeited the favor of the Absolutists by his political reforms, and he had now lost the love of his people by his reluctance to gratify their passion for sway.
Yet if he had basely yielded to their wishes, against his judgment and his conscience, he would have injured only the cause of the papacy in foreign lands, and the issue of the war would not have been changed. As it was, his troops were actively engaged in the contest till the time of their capture at Vicenza by the Austrians. The fatal blow was given to the hopes of Italy by the King of Naples withdrawing his troops at a critical moment, when their loss could not be replaced.
Their departure, and the consequent capture of the papal army under Durando at Vicenza, enabled the Austrians to turn their whole force against the Piedmontese, who were then defeated and driven back. The disgraceful capitulation at Milan followed, and the cause of United Italy was lost forever. Brilliant as its promise had been at the outset, the Revolution of 1848 terminated as pitifully as did those of 1820 and 1831; and for its disastrous issue the Italians have none to blame but themselves.