Prisoner of the Vatican

by David I. Kertzer

  Battling mounting physical ills, over the next few years the aged pope insisted on continuing to host large audiences, drawing strength from the devoted crowds. In addressing a group of Roman youth in October 1872, he used a new metaphor, but his message was unchanged: "The land that has been usurped," Pius told them, "will be like a volcano that with its flames threatens to devour all the usurpers." The following year, speaking to the heads of the religious orders, he warned that despite all the government's talk of guarantees, it in fact sought nothing other than the destruction of the Church itself. But, the pope assured the monks, the forces of evil would not succeed. "When it seemed that the Devil would triumph by means of the Aryans, and the land for a time faced the appalling prospect of being entirely infected by that heretical plague, the Church nonetheless rose up once again. And this time too it will again rise up, because there is no force that can stand against the finger of God."22

  Although such confidence in divine intervention was widespread among the Catholic faithful, not all were so sure. Following a visit to Rome in May 1872, the priest Leonardo Murialdo, who would be made a saint a century later, described what he had found: "The priests, the bishops, and the Catholics are living a continuous and not terribly useful illusion, firmly believing that, at any moment, some miracle will take place to bring about the [Church's] triumph. And this is what is being preached from every pulpit, enraging Italian patriots and alienating the true moderates."23

  And so the world witnessed a peculiar spectacle. Two sovereigns uneasily shared the same capital, the one—thought to be on his last legs—hurling epithets at the other, who was younger and more robust but diffident, swaggering on the battlefield but cowardly before the pope's sacred glow. Or, as the mischievous Gregorovius put it in his entry for January 12: "The Pope continues to sit like a mummy in the Vatican, while the King now and then appears, immediately to go off again on some distant shooting expedition."24

  9. Anticlericalism in Rome

  WHILE THE POPE was warning all who would listen that Italy's ultimate goal was to destroy the papacy and the Catholic Church, Lanza was trying to assure the world of the government's benevolence. But not all Italian patriots were so eager to contest the pope's charge. The anticlerical wing of the unification movement believed that destroying the Papal States was but one—albeit crucial—stage in the larger project of ending the anachronism that was the infallible pope himself. None held this view more firmly than the great hero of unification, Giuseppe Garibaldi. In one of many such tirades, he once urged his followers: "Fight against the Papacy, Italy's internal enemy, which has been a cancer on all humanity! Fight against the theocracy, erecting over the ashes of the papal throne a building that, based on morality and science, is worthy of being the temple of humanity!" Likewise, in a public appeal in 1872, Garibaldi urged the government to liberate Italy from the papacy, replacing it with "the religion of truth, religion without priests, based on reason and science."1

  The hatred that Garibaldi and his comrades harbored toward the Catholic clergy—from the pope down to the village priest—could hardly have been more visceral or intense. As the enemies of Italian unification, dependent on foreign troops to protect them from the people's ire, the clergy represented the forces of darkness. Shortly after the taking of Rome, Garibaldi wrote his famous novel, I Mille (The Thousand), a fictional account of his triumph in Sicily and march toward the Holy City in 1860. It is a story of good against evil, and most evil of all were the Catholic clergy. "The Italian priest," Garibaldi explains early in his book, "is always the traitor of his country."

  "Tyrants and priests, convents and prisons, prisons and mercenaries, there is such an affinity between these scourges of humanity as not to be able to distinguish among them, to consider them the same emanation from hell," writes Garibaldi. "When I think of the power of the priests," says one of the heroes in the book, "I think of how they have reduced even the greatest of nations to the lowest level, inflicted every kind of humiliating degradation on it, having sold it out to the foreigner so many times and, above all, having trained it to the kissing of hands, the genuflections, the fear, the prostitution, and every form of outrageous brutalization, so that in the end one of the most beautiful peoples has been stunted, bent over, made morally and materially inferior to all those peoples who once sat at their feet. Thinking of the power of the priests ... I often wonder whether these cretins ... are nothing other than one of the many families of monkeys that I saw in the New World."2

  But Garibaldi reserves his greatest hostility for the Society of Jesus and the Church hierarchy. "The Jesuits," he wrote, "are nothing other than hypocrites, liars, and cowards." They are "a sect whose aspiration is the idiocy and servility of all those who are not Jesuits." Italy's greatest hero pulled no punches:

  Jesuitism and tyranny represent the evil found in the human family. They are the parasitical plants that want to live and eat at others' expense, and not content to eat for one, they want to eat for a hundred. To sustain their injustice, they use every atrocious means they can to dominate the common people, who in turn call them "villain." Nor are the rest of the priests much better. Wherever they are found they form the local cell dedicated to destroying the Italian homeland and selling it out to foreigners. They preach a series of idiocies about the virginity of the mother of Christ, the supernatural content of the holy wafer, and the like whose preposterous falsehood they laugh at among themselves but peddle to the credulous. "Don't do what I do, but do what I say" is their motto.3

  Italy's anticlerical movement comprised an odd assortment of the middle classes: doctors, lawyers, journalists, intellectuals, schoolteachers, and artisans. They were found not only in the large cities, but in small and medium-sized towns as well, and in the South as well as the North. The new religion was to be the worship of science, the new creed, a faith in progress. The Catholic religion represented the hand of medieval superstition and inequality, faith in the supernatural rather than in reason. As groups of anticlericals formed throughout the country, they held conferences celebrating science and conducted civil funerals in place of funeral masses. The better to show their disdain for the Church, on Catholic holy days they held bacchanalian balls.

  In 1864, the first Democratic Society of Freethinkers was formed in Siena, with the post of honorary president given to Garibaldi. The following year, societies of freethinkers were formed in Naples and Milan, and others soon sprouted up. A barrage of publications appeared, denouncing the Church, the priesthood, and the pope. Uneasily allied with these new societies were the Freemasons. While also anticlerical, they were still weak in Italy in the 1860s and 1870s and often ridiculed by the freethinkers for their secrecy and quasi-religious rites.

  In January 1871, Rome's first Society of Freethinkers was founded, holding its inaugural meeting in front of the Trevi fountain. Its goal was to establish an alternative to the Vatican in Rome, eliminating both the papacy and the Church hierarchy. Rome, so long identified with the pope, would soon symbolize the triumph of reason over superstition.

  Along with the freethinkers, and partially tied to them, was the republican movement—itself divided into various factions—which similarly saw the Vatican as Italy's curse. The day after Rome was taken, the first republican daily newspaper, appropriately titled La Capitale, appeared. As La Capitale saw it, an unholy alliance between the Vatican and the Italian right was the greatest threat faced by the nation. In these first days after September 20, La Capitale, and other papers like it, urged the government to occupy the Leonine city, move the capital to Rome without delay, ban the Jesuits, close down the religious orders, seize Church property, and keep priests out of the public schools. In January 1871, La Capitale began to publish a series of unflattering biographies of popes and cardinals. Its malevolent portrait of Pius IX on the twenty-fourth of the month created such an uproar that the police seized all copies of the issue. "The papacy is dead," an anticlerical deputy exclaimed in parliament that day, "and the Italian Gover
nment need only bury a cadaver."4

  While most of Italy's anticlerical clubs and republican organizations were either local or, at best, linked to weak national associations, two of the major sources of anticlerical agitation in Italy were parts of well-organized international networks. One was the Socialist International, founded by Marx during the early years of Italian unification, which at the time included both socialists and anarchists. By 1872 the first Italian section of the International had been organized in Rimini; another opened the following year in Bologna. The other large network, a very different kind, was the Freemasons. What united them was their belief that the papacy was a vestige of the past that had no place in modern times.

  Followers of the Socialist International were champions of the working classes, and their primary targets were land and factory owners, other elites, and the government. Their view of a man like Lanza or Visconti Venosta was not much more favorable than their view of Pius IX. The Church was for them only a secondary issue. The Freemasons, on the other hand, were another matter. Heavily influenced by the republican ideals of Mazzini, they championed a secular state, worshiping at the altar of science and progress. Although they came from a wide range of social classes, their leaders were mainly professionals.

  The Socialist International ultimately proved to be a much greater threat to the Church, but Pius IX and, later, Leo XIII were obsessed with the danger posed by the masons, whom, along with the socialists and freethinkers, they indiscriminately branded as members of "sects."5 Yet at the time of Italian unification the masons were few and their organization weak. The first Masonic lodge was established in Rome in 1873, but it was only after 1879 that the few thousand members in Italy were sufficiently organized to carry out any concerted action. Not that it prevented Church publications—and, indeed, popes—from portraying them as the occult forces behind Italian unification, responsible for the taking of Rome.

  The Roman police archives for these years are full of reports of violent encounters between anticlerics and loyal Catholics. The police kept the anticlerics under careful watch, and the government had little affection for them. Not only were their raucous demonstrations and sacrilegious publications a source of continuing embarrassment for the government internationally, but they were apt to direct their barbs against the government and the king as well.

  On October 15,1870, the Roman authorities wrote to the provincial government of nearby Frascati to ask about reports they had received of a hostile demonstration against a priest who had allegedly refused to baptize a baby. "They tell me," the Roman police official wrote, "that the population has even descended into violent acts against the parish priest's residence, which was pelted with stones and damaged." Two days later the head of Frascati's provincial government responded, re-counting the facts. Tarquinio Balzoni had brought his newborn baby to the cathedral to be baptized, but the priest in charge "vigorously refused to administer the Baptism because the Godfather had been excommunicated both for being the Vice Secretary of the Municipal Government and for having voted in the plebiscite for the annexation of the Roman Provinces to the Kingdom of Italy." The priest's refusal provoked the ire of the citizenry, and attempts by the head of the province and the chief of the police squad to convince him to perform the baptism got nowhere. But, the provincial head hastened to add, there had been no violence and no attack on the priest's home. These were malicious rumors. 6

  On December 6, 1870, in a typical report, a Roman police official wrote that some youths were running through Rome's streets at night shouting "Long live Pius IX!" Other small groups—of a different bent—had been disturbing public tranquility by shouting "Long live the Republic!" The official assured police headquarters that he was doing all he could to discover who was behind the disorders and to prevent them in the future.7 Meanwhile, other disturbing reports told of the Vatican's plans to use the observance of the Immaculate Conception to organize a demonstration against the Italian government. The police official in charge of the area around the Vatican, warning of these plans, relayed a bizarre rumor. Word was circulating around the Vatican, he reported, "that on the sacred day of the Conception a miracle will take place. People will wake up to find that not a single Piedmontese soldier remains in Rome!!"8

  The Italian authorities did have reason to worry. At 4 P.M. on December 8, disorders erupted on the imposing steps of St. Peter's and beneath the columns stretching out around the square. The police report the following day found fault on both sides, blaming the violence on "the reciprocal hatred between the lower classes of Rome and those who see themselves as the most loyal supporters of the Pope's temporal power." Angry shouts and threats had led to fisticuffs and general may hem. With the arrival of a squad of police, the rioters dispersed, and seven arrests were made. 9

  Three days later, new violence broke out in St. Peter's Square. The police had gotten word that the troublemakers were going to return to the basilica to create more mischief, so the official in charge stationed police throughout the square in front of the world's most famous church. Through the afternoon, more and more men of an anticlerical bent streamed into the piazza—at least a thousand, according to later police reports. The police struggled to get them to disperse. Around 5 P.M., as two young members of the pope's Swiss Guard left St. Peter's, one of the groups of young men approached them, accusing them of being caccialepri, former members of the reviled urban papal police squad. A growing crowd, in an increasingly foul mood, began to shout "Kill them! They're caccialepri!" The police rushed in and escorted the two young men to safety. When they arrested two of the troublemakers, hundreds of their companions began threatening the officers, demanding that they be released. Police reinforcements moved in, arresting eight men in all. In this and other such cases, what stands out is how many of those arrested were artisans: a tinsmith, a hatmaker, a blacksmith, a cabinetmaker.10

  Violent encounters between the anticlerics and Catholics erupted with regularity around the city in these first months and years after the taking of Rome; remarkably, none resulted in serious injury. One of the more dramatic of these scenes occurred on March 10,1871, at the Church of Jesus, the Jesuits' principal church, and so a particularly juicy target for the anticlerics. The previous day, a group of young anticlerics had confronted a group of devoted Catholics of the church. Their accounts varied. According to the Catholics, a young man named Enrico Santini, a lieutenant in the national guard, came into the church during the sermon and began to ridicule the preacher. After the service, as he was leaving with his coterie, he again raised his voice to the other churchgoers: "You don't believe all that nonsense that that monk has been spouting?" he asked. A group of angry young men confronted him, and a fight broke out.

  A later government report told a different story: Santini, wearing civilian clothes, had attended mass at the Church of Jesus. At 11:30 A.M., as people were leaving, twenty former caccialepri, using as their pretext the charge that they had seen Santini smile disrespectfully, attacked him with fists and sticks, leaving him bleeding. It was due to this unprovoked assault, in this account, that the following day some friends of Santini's decided to gather outside the huge door of the Church of Jesus, waiting for the celebrants to come out from mass.

  The anticlerical crowd grew rapidly to two thousand, spilling out beyond the piazza and into the small streets that fed it. Civiltà Cattolica, in its account of the events that followed, characterized the throng as "composed in large part of filthy plebes and lowly beggars," many of whom were "either nonbelievers, or foreign Protestants in the city, or Jews." Again the chaos that ensued spawned two very different stories. In the liberal press, what precipitated events were the caccialepri, who strutted out of the church with a threatening swagger. "This is one of the usual lies of the liberal press," responded Civiltà Cattolica. "Can you imagine how a handful of young men, courageous, true, but virtuous and modest, as are those whom the rabble call 'caccialepri,' would want to leave the church with a threatening expression toward
such a large crowd?" What both sides admit is that the crowd showered the young Catholic men with insults, and scuffling broke out on the steps of the church. The police already stationed there were soon reinforced by two companies of infantry, who formed a defensive line in front of the church, facing the crowd. Despite repeated orders to disperse, the people would not leave, so the soldiers fixed their bayonets and began to move toward the throng. The crowd retreated from the soldiers but then reformed, continuing to hurl insults at the men filing out of the church.

  Amid the mayhem, the soldiers received orders to move into the church itself. As the secular Roman newspaper La Libertà told the story, the police and soldiers were forced to go in to quell the violence that had broken out: "Some police agents and some soldiers entered the church where the disorder was great. Many clubs were seized, belonging for the most part to those who were already in the church; and it was discovered that some of these had blades affixed to them. It has come to our attention that a number of knives were also seized." Again, Civiltà Cattolica offered a very different story. The huge doors of the church, which had been closed as soon as the disorder in the piazza began, were flung open violently and "a horde of carabinieri, national guard, and policemen raced in furiously with their swords out and their daggers drawn, followed by soldiers with their rifles aimed straight ahead. It was this violent entry of armed forces in the church that was the true cause of the disorder that followed, especially because of the fright it gave the women who were inside. Many were arrested in the church, honest, upstanding young men, guilty of nothing other than having attended the sacred gathering, and among them a young priest, the son of Count Barbellini." For the Jesuit journal, the lesson was clear: "These disorders, which have by now become so frequent, are proof of the ... impossibility of the coexistence in Rome of two Sovereigns, the one spiritual, the other temporal." 11