Prisoner of the Vatican
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The French envoy presented Visconti with this proposal the day he received it. But, as he reported back to the French foreign minister, he had little luck. "To give up transferring the capital, or even to delay it," Visconti told him, "would expose Italy to a dangerous crisis for which no minister would accept the responsibility." Italy's foreign minister then asked rhetorically, "And what would the pope gain?...Instead of finding himself in the presence of a strong government, which has the best intentions and would maintain perfect order, he would find himself in the presence of a prefect and a municipal council that lacked sufficient authority to put down the excesses of a population irritated to see itself deprived of a capital." In any case, Visconti added, even if they kept the capital in Florence, the pope would still demand that his kingdom be restored. It would take more than this gesture, far more, to satisfy the pope.25
With the capital's transfer just weeks away, foreign pressures on Italy to delay the move continued to grow. On June 4, in Vienna, the Austrian foreign minister, Beust, told Marco Minghetti, the Italian ambassador, of a meeting he had just had in Munich with the Bavarian foreign minister. Why not make Rome into the Moscow of Italy? the Bavarian minister asked, again echoing La Marmora's suggestion. Rome would then technically be the capital, but it would not be the seat of government. Minghetti replied that the idea had already been much discussed in Florence but that it was impossible for two reasons. First, if Rome were not the capital, which Italian city would be? If Florence were to be the permanent capital, the people in Naples and Turin would be up in arms, feeling that they had better claims; unlike Florence, they had both had long histories hosting royal courts. Second, without the government, Rome, instead of becoming a center of conservatism, would be the center of intrigue and popular agitation of all kinds. 26
On July 1, 1871, the Italian government moved to Rome. Victor Emmanuel came the next day. Although he had sent instructions that popular celebrations be minimized in order not to unduly offend the pope, the city was excited nonetheless. The king arrived from Naples shortly after noon in a long line of carriages filled with an assortment of government ministers and generals decked out in their most colorful uniforms. Flowers rained down from the balconies, but Gregorovius, who was there, observed that the king appeared "stiff, and gloomy and ugly." The European powers, bowing to the pleadings of the Holy See, kept their emissaries away. "Today," Gregorovius wrote in his diary, "is the close of the thousand years' dominion of the Papacy in Rome." In the shadow of the Vatican, the cannon of Sant'Angelo Castle thundered. "How the Pope's heart must have quailed at every shot!" wrote Gregorovius. "A tragedy without a parallel is being enacted here."27
For the faithful abroad, the king's occupation of the pope's Quirinal Palace was a horrifying sight. In early July, Le Monde expressed a widespread sentiment: "The simultaneous existence at Rome of two independent sovereigns is impossible." No one was more conscious of this fact than Victor Emmanuel, who would spend as little time as possible in his new capital and, indeed, could not be convinced to stay more than a day and a half after his triumphal arrival on July 2. In the years that followed, he stayed in Rome only when he had no alternative, such as for the opening ceremonies of parliament.28
The king explained this discomfort one day when talking to the queen of Holland: "I would really love to see the pope leave Rome, because I can't look out the window of the Quirinal without seeing the Vatican, and it seems to me that Pius IX and I are both prisoners." Or, as he was reported to have said another time: "Over there a prisoner who is free, here a free man who is a prisoner."29
7. Pius IX in Exile Again?
LONG BEFORE THE KING ever set foot in the Holy City, the pope had already excommunicated him and all those guilty of despoiling the Papal States. The founders of the modern Italian nation were again excommunicated in Respicientes ea omnis, the encyclical released on November 1,1870, which declared the Italian state's occupation of the Papal States null and void. The Holy See, the pope pronounced, would never reconcile itself with those who had stolen its lands. "Despite our advanced age," Pius wrote, "we prefer ... with divine aid, to drink the cup to the dregs rather than accept the iniquitous proposals which have been made to us.1
The proposals that the pope had in mind—aside from the offer of the Leonine city—were part of the Italian government's effort to calm international opinion by enacting what came to be dubbed "the law of guarantees." Lanza and his colleagues needed to show Europe's other powers that the Italian occupation of Rome had done nothing to prevent the pope's fulfilling his spiritual role as head of the Church. Before September 20, when they were trying to convince foreign governments not to oppose their march into the Holy City, Lanza, the king, and the foreign minister pledged that once they took Rome, they would submit to an international conference aimed at crafting the protections offered to the Holy See. But once they controlled Rome, they were just as eager to prevent such a conference. These were internal Italian matters, Lanza insisted. No foreign government could tell the Italians what to do within their own borders. Yet, as Lanza was well aware, their only hope of getting other governments to go along with them was to prove that they had already provided for the pope's security and freedom.
The Italians had another aim in trumpeting their law of guarantees. They wanted to allay fears that the pope, now in some sense a subject of the king of Italy, would become a court chaplain to the monarch who had usurped him. A pope controlled by Italy—a prospect made all the more credible because all the popes for the past three hundred years had been Italian—risked turning Catholics abroad into agents of a foreign power. Ironically, from this perspective, the more loudly Pius denounced the Italian leaders the better they liked it, for it offered proof of his independence.2
Agreeing on just what guarantees should be offered proved to be difficult. Cavour's famous doctrine of "a free Church in a free State," implying the complete separation of church and state, was championed by some conservatives, including Lanza and Visconti. But others followed the long European tradition that viewed government oversight as necessary, not least in the appointment of bishops, a prerogative that secular rulers enjoyed elsewhere. For the many anticlerics, allowing the Church full freedom was a prescription for national suicide; the Church was the sworn enemy of the state, dedicated to its destruction. The vast network of parishes, monasteries, and schools—if left alone—would, in this view, prove to be the new state's downfall. As a result, fierce debate raged in parliament for the first months of 1871, and the final legislation, signed by the king in Turin on May 13, was full of compromises.
The law began with a pledge that the pope's person was to be considered "sacred and inviolable." Any attack on him was to be treated in the same way as an attack on the king. The Italian government would render the pope all honors due a sovereign, and he was to be paid the huge sum of 3,225,000 lire per year, free of taxation, from the public treasury to cover his own expenses and those of the Holy See. The Vatican palaces, with their museums, works of art, libraries, and surrounding gardens, as well as the Lateran Palace and Castel Gandolfo, the summer estate outside Rome, would all be reserved for the pope and considered inalienable and exempt from taxes. No public official or police would be allowed to enter any of these buildings unless explicitly invited. Foreign emissaries to the Holy See would enjoy the same rights accorded foreign diplomats to Italy, and the pope was assured of the ability to correspond freely with the Episcopate and the whole Catholic world.
The law of guarantees further specified that Italian bishops would not be required to pledge their loyalty to the king, and no government authorization would be needed for the Church to publish its own official acts. However—and here came a clause that caused much anguish in the Church—government approval would still be necessary for new appointees to be allowed to take control of Church property outside Rome. This provision thus required new bishops to receive government permission before taking up residence in their new bishopric, a requirement l
ong followed in other Catholic countries, but it created special problems here because the Church refused to recognize the legitimacy of the state.3
A week after the law went into effect, Visconti sent a copy (in French) to all of his ambassadors, asking them to bring it to the attention of the governments they served.4 The pope did not wait so long. Just two days after the king signed the law, Pius IX released an encyclical, Ubi nos, addressed to bishops throughout the world. "Our days," the pope lamented, "are filled with bitterness." Conditions were getting ever worse: "We are compelled to repeat the words of St. Bernard," said the pope, "'this is the beginning of the evils; we fear worse evil.'"
Pius went on to warn of the pernicious plans of the "Piedmontese government," which, in order "to deceive Catholics and allay their anguish, has promoted certain empty immunities and privileges, commonly called 'guarantees.'" He reminded the bishops that when the guarantees were first discussed several months earlier, he had "stigmatized their absurdity, cunning, and mockery." Yet the shameless Piedmontese government had pressed ahead with its plan, a "novel and unheard-of sacrilege." There could be no compromise. "We never can and never shall allow or accept those 'guarantees' devised by the Piedmont Government, whatever their motive. Nor shall we ever accept other similar ones," the pope insisted. "Divine Providence gave the civil rule of the Holy See to the Roman Pontiff. This rule is necessary in order that the Roman Pontiff may never be subject to any ruler or civil power." Pius then turned to the foreign powers and called for their help. Voicing his belief that "the rulers of the earth do not want the usurpation which We are suffering to be established," he concluded with the prayer: "May these rulers join in a common effort to have the rights of the Holy See restored."5
The pope's constant calls to Catholics throughout the world to return him to power rattled the Italian government. With the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War in view, they expected the great powers' attention to turn once again to the Italian question, or rather the Roman question. Early in March 1871, Visconti confided his worries to Italy's ambassador to Berlin. Cynically manipulated by Italy's many enemies, Visconti wrote, "the Roman question dominates our politics," introducing "an element of uncertainty in Italy's future." He added: "The Roman Curia asks and wants one thing and one thing only: war on Italy to restore temporal power by military intervention." The Jesuits, Visconti believed—a belief that was widely shared—had the pope under their spell and were working feverishly to get him to reject any compromise. 6
Long viewed with a combination of suspicion, distaste, and grudging admiration, the Jesuits had been repeatedly expelled by secular rulers. In 1773, Pope Clement XIV, bending to such pressure, disbanded the order and had its leader locked up in Sant'Angelo Castle, where he died two years later. Resuscitated in 1814, the order continued to be controversial. Pius IX himself had not been that well disposed to the Jesuits at the beginning of his papacy, resenting their opposition to his attempted reforms and suspicious of their ambition. Yet, after the revolutions of 1848 he increasingly became dependent on them, viewing them as the most theologically and politically sophisticated advisers he had.7
In 1850, eager to have a publication that would defend papal powers and champion his causes, Pius turned to a group of Jesuits in Rome; they launched La Civiltà Cattolica and published it twice a month. Quickly becoming the most influential Catholic publication in the world, it offered the Vatican's views on the issues of the time. By the 1860s, the influence of Rome's Jesuits was beyond dispute: they served as key advisers in preparing both the Syllabus of Errors and the Vatican Council. As articulate and dogged champions of papal infallibility and the necessity of temporal power, constantly on the lookout for signs of liberal thinking in the Church, the Jesuits viewed the world much as the pope did.8 As Lord Acton wrote in 1870, when he was in Rome to lobby against papal infallibility, Pius IX "made [the Jesuits] a channel of his influence, and became an instrument of their own."9 By early 1871, cartoons were appearing in the liberal press in Rome that portrayed the pope as a Jesuit stooge. In one, titled "The Flight to Corsica" (alluding to the Jesuits' efforts to get Pius to flee Rome), Antonelli is seated on an ass behind the pope—who is pictured as the size of a child—holding a large umbrella over him. A Jesuit leads the ass with a rope. 10
The Jesuits were scarcely more popular among their fellow priests. In November 1870, one of Lanza's confidential emissaries met secretly in the Vatican with the widely respected Father Augustin Theiner, the former head of the Vatican Secret Archives. One of the major subjects of their conversation was what the Italian government should do about the Jesuits.11
The report that Lanza received offered clear advice: the Italian government must immediately expel them from all of Italy, including Rome. The Jesuits, Father Theiner warned, would forever be an insuperable obstacle to concilation, not only for the present pope but for his successor. The popular demonstrations throughout the Catholic world calling for the restoration of the pope's temporal power, said Theiner, were entirely the work of the Jesuits, who were forcing unenthusiastic bishops to toe the line.
Sending them into exile, Theiner counseled, would not only be good for the government, it would also work to the Church's benefit, and members of the other religious orders would applaud the move. The "ignorance and crude fanaticism of the Italian clergy, and the imbecility of the Italian episcopate," Theiner charged, "are the sole product of Jesuit education in Italy, the absorption of the Italian Church by Jesuitism." 12
One morning a few weeks later, Lanza's emissary had a confidential meeting with Cardinal Pietro De Silvestri, another enemy of Jesuit influence in the Vatican. The cardinal was no doubt nervous, for members of the Curia had recently been warned against having any contact with Italian officials, and those coming under suspicion were being watched.
Nothing was more important for the Vatican, said the cardinal, than showing the world that disorder reigned in Rome and that the pope would remain a prisoner until freed by foreign intervention. It was crucial, he advised, for the Italian government to prevent disorders in the vicinity of the Vatican and to guard against any disruption of religious functions elsewhere in the Holy City.
"The Jesuits," said Cardinal Silvestri, "are the soul of the Vatican, and every hostile project originates with them." Father Picirillo, the director of Civiltà Cattolica, he charged, had become all-powerful. "It is absolutely necessary to expel them all from Italy."13
Although Theiner and Silvestri may have exaggerated the Jesuits' influence, there were in fact no greater champions of the wholesale rejection of the Italian state than the Jesuits, who were constantly pressing the pope to take a hard line. Their calls in Civiltà Cattolica for foreign intervention to restore the Papal States led to repeated demands from the secular press to have the paper shut down.
In an article in the spring of 1871, the Jesuits counterattacked. "The unity of a state with a nation can be a good thing or a bad thing, according to the circumstances," they argued. Ethnic Germans lived in Germany, but Germans also lived in Austria, and few argued that it posed any problem. Why must a single state encompass all Italians? As for the liberals' denunciation of Catholics who sought the help of foreign armies to restore the pope to power, this was sheer hypocrisy. In 1859, didn't Victor Emmanuel and Cavour call on the French army to help them conquer northern Italy? "What right do they have to complain if others imitate their example?" Foreign intervention, the Jesuit journal observed, "is always a good thing if it comes in aid of an innocent oppressed party, and indeed, sometimes it is obligatory." In the current case, it was not even a matter of foreign intervention, for all baptized Catholics were children of the pope and viewed Rome as their own home. Consequently, the journal concluded, their intervention on behalf of the pope "is a domestic matter, not a foreign one."14
Even before the Italian forces had seized Rome, the pope had been besieged by advisers urging him to leave Rome and Italy behind. According to all accounts, his most trusted Jesuit advisers wer
e among the most insistent in pressing him to leave at once.15
But where exactly was he to go? Over the next two decades, no destination was mentioned more often than the British island of Malta. On September 6, Lanza received a report from another source in Rome: "The Jesuit Party, which is the strongest in the Vatican, is trying to convince the Pope to escape to Malta and believes it is succeeding."16 Three days later, another informant told him of a conversation he had had recently with a former general of a religious order, who confirmed the pope's decision to go to Malta. Antonelli, in this account, had doubts about such a course, "but the Jesuits count more than Antonelli at this moment."17
It would not be easy to convince Pius to leave Rome again, for he was now an old man, and a voyage into the unknown had little appeal. Yet his emotional reaction to the taking of Rome, and his tendency to change his mind rapidly on nondoctrinal matters, meant that his departure was far from impossible. Just before the attack on Rome, he is said to have told the Prussian ambassador: "There, you see all my things are packed up. I depart as soon as they enter."18
When the Italian troops occupied Rome, the pope could no longer put off the decision. But before making the fateful choice, he decided to ask ten cardinals to provide a written reply to the question: "Should we think of taking the difficult step of leaving Rome and if so, where to?" In the wake of the Italian invasion, it was deemed too dangerous for the cardinals to appear in their purple robes on the streets of Rome, so no meeting of the Sacred College of Cardinals was called. But what is a bit odd about the pope's survey is that, rather than ask Antonelli to coordinate the consultation, he sidestepped his secretary of state and instead asked a trusted adviser, Cardinal Costantino Patrizi, to take charge. Also curious was the selection of cardinals to be approached: while ten were asked to provide their advice, another seventeen cardinals then in Rome were not. The list was apparently prepared by the pope himself, composed of those whose judgment he most trusted. The urgent requests were sent out by Patrizi just a day after the Italian occupation of Rome, the answers dribbling back in between the twenty-fourth and the twenty-seventh of September.19