Prisoner of the Vatican

by David I. Kertzer

  Despite all its public disclaimers, the Italian government was then frantically casting about for an excuse to take Rome. On August 25, Prime Minister Lanza described some of these shadowy efforts. He had met a few days earlier with a representative of a group of parliamentary conspirators who were planning to create chaos in Rome. They were funneling funds to operatives in Rome who were supposed to organize armed assaults on military barracks, aimed at provoking a popular uprising. The prime minister was skeptical. "These are all very nice and easy things to say, but impossible to put into practice in Rome," he wrote, "which lacks both courageous youths and men energetic enough to lead them."

  Although Lanza thought their plan impractical, he did not want to discourage them entirely. "I gave them a little hope," he recalled, adding that he would consider helping them "when they begin to think seriously about taking direct action to push the Papal Government into complete anarchy, and so give the Italian Government a rationale for intervening to restore order and protect the Holy Father." He then described how it might best be done, supported by secret funds that he would provide. "Above all," wrote Lanza, "it is necessary to bribe the [papal] troops, and this will be done. This will produce constant, loud arguments among the soldiers, who are from different countries and so are already suspicious of one another, and then it will only take a little breeze to fan the conflagration." Other steps would follow: "With the money spent judiciously and with caution, the soldiers' brawls will then spread to the lower classes, through provocations in the taverns, on the streets, and wherever else it is possible." Should all go according to plan, Lanza wrote, "at night the city would be continuously disturbed by the sounds of gunfire. We would arrange for Italian flags to be raised, here one time, there another. In short," he pledged, he would do everything "to show the whole world that Rome was in the throes of total anarchy, and that the pope's Government could no longer control the situation with its own forces." But, the prime minister warned, the matter had to be handled with care: "See that as many disorders as you like break out in Rome, and of any kind, but not revolution, nor even assaults on the barracks. We will provide the money, and then we will see." 24

  Prime minister since the previous year, the sixty-year-old Lanza was from Piedmont, like many of Italy's major government figures of the time, having served as Cavour's minister of education in the government of the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1855 and in a series of ever more powerful posts thereafter. A bit taller than average, with a big head and large, dark brown eyes and bushy eyebrows, he had a rather severe air about him, although when he laughed, his face softened. He had a prominent, somewhat curved nose and broad cheeks, with a droopy mustache that hung over his well-trimmed beard. His voice was distinctive, robust, but somewhat nasal. Although his accent seemed to betoken an aristocratic origin, he was in fact the son of a blacksmith who had become a modest property owner.25 Lanza had gone far, and he was about to play a central role in mediating among the king, the conservatives, and the left in guiding Italy into Rome and in making Rome the new capital.

  The other major protagonist of the Italian government in 1870 was the minister of foreign affairs, Emilio Visconti Venosta. The first-born son of a noble family of vast landholdings, based in Milan, Visconti was swept up in the revolutionary movement of 1848. Nineteen years old at the time, he joined Garibaldi's forces in the battle to eject the Austrians and became enamored of Mazzini. But a few years later he repudiated the republican champion, believing that the Savoyard monarchy offered the best hope for unifying Italy. In 1863 Visconti was appointed minister of foreign affairs for the first of what would turn out to be seven times, the last of which would take him into the twentieth century.26

  Made foreign affairs minister again in 1869, Visconti entered into a peculiar relation with Lanza. They were very different characters: Lanza was energetic, decisive, and outgoing; Visconti, brooding and cautious, carefully measuring every word. While Lanza led the effort to convince his colleagues in the government to take Rome and had no great sympathy for the papacy, Visconti was consumed by the desire to preserve good relations with the Holy See, fearful that brash action by the government might lead the pope to seek refuge abroad. The Vatican's demonization of Visconti pained him deeply, while Lanza sloughed off such attacks. Until the very day that the Italian forces rushed into Rome, Visconti nourished the hope that, despite all the pope's protests, he would in the end agree to a compromise with the Italian state. 27

  On August 29, Visconti sent a confidential dispatch to Italian ambassadors throughout Europe, arguing that the upheavals that were now unsettling Europe had rendered the Convention of September null and void. Italy sought to reconcile two fundamental aims, he told them, guaranteeing its national aspirations and the right of the Romans to determine their own future while ensuring "the pope's independence, freedom, and religious authority."

  Yet, Visconti complained, the Holy See had refused to discuss any solution to the problem and had instead become "an enemy Government established as an enclave within the Kingdom, seeking in the confusions sweeping Europe to trigger new military intervention." As a result, Italy now faced a mortal threat, for, Visconti charged, "the Roman territory is the nerve center for the party that plots foreign intervention aimed at restoring another political order on the peninsula."

  But still he thought military action against Rome might be avoided. All depended on the pope's willingness to listen to reason. For the past ten years, Visconti explained, in the course of negotiations among the various Catholic countries, "the possible bases of a definitive solution of the Roman question have been confidentially agreed upon." And here Visconti came to the government's secret plan, set out in an attached memo. The Italian ambassadors were to bring the plan to the attention of friendly governments in a final effort to avoid military confrontation with the pope. It is a remarkable document, and had Pius accepted the plan, the future of Rome, Italy, and the papacy might have been very different.

  Titled "Notes on the Leonine City" and written, like Visconti's dispatch, in French, it begins by offering some historical background: "The Tiber divides Rome into two parts, one of which, on the right bank of the river, is commonly known as the Leonine city, named for Popes Leo III and Leo IV, the first having founded it, and the second seeing it through its completion in 849." The Leonine city had been surrounded on three sides by a wall, much of which still remained, extending 1,300 meters long and 700 wide, with the Tiber forming the fourth.

  The solution to the Roman problem was clear: give the pope the Leonine city. Fifteen thousand people lived within its borders, and it had room for many more if its spacious gardens were cut back to allow the construction of new buildings. It already contained a large number of churches and palaces. Indeed, Visconti concluded, with "St. Peter's church, the Vatican and all its huge conglomeration of attached buildings, the tombs of the apostles and of the most famous popes, numerous religious and artistic monuments, the Leonine city is both a remarkable city and a splendid residence for the sovereign head of the Catholic religion."28

  The pope, unmoved, dismissed the Italian offer out of hand. In the battle between God's forces and those of the Devil, he knew who would prevail. "In the Church Hierarchy," the Italian prefect based just south of Rome told Lanza, "the belief is growing that Italy, as it exists today, will not last long.... They predict with certainty and with growing confidence that 1871 will see Italy cut up into at least three parts: the South, the North, and the Papal lands in the middle, placed above both others." Toward this end, the prefect charged, the Holy See was conniving with foreign powers, including Prussia.29

  The pope and his allies kept trying to convince themselves and the nervous Roman population that, notwithstanding the massing of Italian troops on their border, there was no chance of invasion. On August 30, L'Osservatore Romano admitted that the number of Italian soldiers there was growing every day but added, "It is certain that this force has no offensive aim of any kind, but is at the Roman border o
ut of respect for the Convention of September." As evidence, the correspondent cited the soldiers' lack of a mobile telegraph and postal system. "This clearly shows," he concluded, "that these troops are intended to operate inside the kingdom [of Italy], to be ready in case of any disorders provoked by the subversive parties."30

  And so the historic month of September 1870 began. On the first day of the month came one of the most painful military defeats in French history, the Prussian victory at Sedan, where Napoleon III himself was captured. When news of the French disaster reached Italy two days later, the nationalists were ecstatic. Lanza could wait no longer and called on the government to approve a march on Rome, disingenuously using as his pretext the likelihood that if the government did not act, the revolutionaries in Rome might take things into their own hands. Still his foreign minister, Visconti, hesitated, believing that Italy was bound by the September Convention.

  Events in France finally pushed things over the edge. On September 4, with their disgraced emperor in captivity, the French proclaimed the end of the monarchy and the establishment of a new republic. The news had a dramatic effect in Florence, not least on the king himself. Victor Emmanuel had felt constrained not to invade Rome by his agreement with the French emperor, whom he regarded as a friend. Now there was no French emperor. And whatever remaining scruples he had about renouncing the treaty evaporated when he realized that if he were to stand in the way of taking Rome, he could well suffer a fate similar to Napoleon's. The Italians, like the French, might well turn against their king and proclaim a republic.

  The king was also influenced by reports from Rome that the pope would never agree to a peaceful end to his remaining state. "The Vatican," Count Kulczycki wrote to the foreign ministry on September 5, "will submit only to an act of violence."

  The count also described the surprising division of opinion in the Holy See about just what France's defeat meant for the future of papal rule. The pope had been stunned by the news, and Antonelli was so stricken that, uncharacteristically, he had also let his emotions show. Yet many Roman prelates reacted with glee to the news of Napoleon's captivity and fall. Kulczycki explained: '"That's the end of Italian unity!' they all cried. They are more than ever convinced that Prussia's dismantling of Italy is now near."31

  On September 6, the king approved sending Italian troops into Rome, contingent on making one last attempt to convince the pope to accept a peaceful solution. But Victor Emmanuel, on the eve of what many would see as his great triumph, was not a happy man. In these fervid weeks he had felt constantly pressured by his ministers to do what they wanted, when it was in just such circumstances of high international drama that he felt it was he who should be making the decisions. He was particularly annoyed with Lanza, an irritation he made clear every time they met. Practically on the eve of the march into Rome, the prime minister decided that he could take no more, sending the king a letter of resignation on September 7. "The sense of lack of confidence and of unhappiness in the direction of state affairs that Your Majesty has repeatedly manifested to me," Lanza wrote, "both in our private meetings and in the presence of my colleagues, has caused me such despair that I no longer wish to remain as head of Your Majesty's government." Stung by the note and fearful of losing his talented prime minister at such a critical moment, Victor Emmanuel reluctantly urged him to stay on. 32

  The next day, Visconti sent a circular to all of Italy's foreign ambassadors, providing the official justification for Italy's decision to seize Rome. Every government, he wrote, reserves for itself the right of self-defense. The chaos overtaking Europe, leading to upheaval in the pontifical lands, had now made it impossible for Italy to remain idle. Italy could not stand by while the pope faced the rising threat posed by Rome's rebellious population, for the Italian government had pledged to ensure his safety. As a result, Italy now felt compelled to occupy the papal lands.33

  What most worried the Italians as they prepared to invade Rome was France, which, despite its catastrophic military situation and its political chaos, remained formally pledged to protect the integrity of the pope's remaining domain. With this in mind, a little after midnight on September 7, before distributing his circular to all the ambassadors, Visconti sent a separate telegram to his ambassador in Paris. Hopeful that the new republican government might be willing to change course, Visconti advanced two arguments. First, he wrote, the French should be aware that, in seizing Rome, Italy had the tacit backing of all of the continent's other powers: Austria, Prussia, Spain, Switzerland, and Bavaria. Second, Visconti added, if the new French leadership did not oppose the Italian move, "it would help us eliminate the source of great difficulty for the future relations between Italy and France," and "everyone in our country, unanimous as they are regarding the Roman question, would feel in the French Republic's debt."34

  On September 8, the king called on Count Ponza di San Martino, a prominent Piedmontese conservative, to deliver a final personal plea to Pius.35 In the letter he gave to the count, the king claimed to be motivated only by a desire to protect the pontiff: together they faced growing revolutionary threats aimed against both papacy and throne. Given these dangers, wrote Victor Emmanuel, "[i]n order to ensure the security both of Italy and the Holy See, I see the inescapable necessity of sending my troops, which are already guarding the border, to occupy those positions that are necessary for Your Holiness's safety." In a phrase that likely sent the temperamental pope's blood pressure rocketing, the king added: "I trust that Your Holiness will not want to see this precautionary measure as a hostile act."

  Along with the letter, the count carried a document that Lanza had prepared, setting out ten articles to serve as the basis for an agreement between Italy and the Holy See. The pope would retain the inviolability and prerogatives attaching to him as a sovereign. The Leonine city would remain "under the full jurisdiction and sovereignty of the Pontiff." The Italian state would guarantee the pope's freedom to communicate with the Catholic world, as well as diplomatic immunity both for the nuncios and envoys in foreign lands and for the foreign diplomats at the Holy See. The government would supply a permanent annual fund for the pope and the cardinals, equal to the amount currently assigned to them by the budget of the pontifical state, and would assume all papal civil servants and soldiers onto the state payroll, with full pensions, as long as they were Italian. Finally, Lanza pledged, "[t]hese provisions will be considered as a public bilateral treaty and will be the object of an agreement among all the Catholic Powers who choose to enter into it."36

  Despite this last-minute effort, the prime minister had little reason to be optimistic that war could be avoided. On the very day that Ponza was sent to Rome, Lanza heard from Count Kulczycki. The Holy See, he reported, had already decided to respond to the king with an emphatic "non possumus" (we cannot). At the same time, Pius was trying to calm Rome's restive population, taking a carefree stroll the previous day down the entire length of the Corso, in the middle of the city. The Jesuits had won out, Kulczycki wrote, and the pope would take the approach he had used successfully the last time he faced losing Rome. The moment that the Italian troops entered the city, he would excommunicate the king and the members of the Italian government and then announce his impending departure. He would issue a call to all the world's Catholic faithful to come to his aid, as he had from Gaeta twenty-one years earlier.37

  Count Ponza and his aide, the Marquis Guiccioli, traveled overnight by train from Florence to Rome on a special carriage that had been seized a decade earlier from the grandduke of Tuscany, sending word to the secretary of state on their arrival. Antonelli responded immediately, fixing an appointment with them for that very evening, the ninth, at 7 P.M., and scheduling their meeting with the pope for the following morning at ten o'clock.38 Both Antonelli and Ponza later wrote about their encounter that evening, which lasted over two hours. Antonelli recorded the full text of the conversation, beginning with Ponza's first words:

  "I come, Your Eminence, bearing a letter from
King Victor Emmanuel for His Holy Father, and I am pleased to be able to carry out such a benevolent mission, aimed at giving the Italian Government's guarantee of the continued independence and prestige of the Holy See."

  "Excellent. Then your Government, Signor Count, recognizes the absolute need of independence for the Head of a Religion that has interests in countries throughout the world?"

  "Yes, Your Eminence, indeed, it is convinced of it."

  "Ah, that comforts me, Signor Count, and I am pleased to hear that this great truth has finally been understood."

  "Let's be clear, I refer to spiritual independence."

  "Indeed, spiritual independence, because the Holy See above all has need of it in order to carry out its earthly mission."

  "Precisely, Your Eminence, and I will be pleased to bring the King and the Government the wonderful news that the longed-for pacification has been concluded."

  "Yes, but first we must discuss the details, Signor Count, and see if they truly guarantee this independence of the Pope that your Government so reasonably desires."

  Here Antonelli paused in his reconstruction of the conversation to observe that Count Ponza began to employ all of his vaunted eloquence to convince him of the value of what the king was offering: a bolstering of papal prestige and authority, unlimited respect for the Holy Father and his Court, and financial support and the protection of Catholic institutions. "All this and much more the Count promised," recalled Antonelli. The cardinal then spoke:

  "Very well, Signor Count, and I certainly want to believe in your loyalty, and in that of your Government. But in whose name, Signor Count, do you promise all this?"

  "Why, in the name of the King's Government!"