But two months later, Romans witnessed a dramatic scene. A black Mercedes convertible pulled up to the Montecitorio Palace, the home of Italy's House of Deputies. The car bore a distinctive license plate: VATICAN CITY i. Gingerly, but without assistance, the elderly, ailing passenger, dressed in his white robes and white skullcap, emerged from the back. There to receive him were the presidents of the House and the Senate. As John Paul II made his way into the great hemisphere of the parliamentary hall, an enthusiastic burst of applause erupted from the assembled dignitaries, a rare joint session of the House and Senate, with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the members of his cabinet present. The pontiff spoke for forty-six minutes, urging the Italian state to more fully embrace Catholic values. When he finished, the members of parliament and cabinet ministers rushed to greet him, some getting down on their knees before him, others kissing his hand. For the first time since Pius IX lost the Holy City, the distinctive papal white and yellow flag flew proudly over the center of power in Rome.
Far from sacred today, by contrast, are the heroes of Italian unification, their motives questioned, their honesty impugned, and their project of national unification itself viewed negatively by the growing chorus of voices emboldened by the current atmosphere to express sentiments that in an earlier period would have targeted them for public scorn.
In 1999 the archbishop of Bologna, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, one of the Italian Church's best-known figures, published a small book on the Risorgimento. There he quoted Feodor Dostoyevsky as asking, in 1877, apropos of Cavour's success in unifying Italy: "And so just what did Count Cavour accomplish? A little second-rate kingdom, of no international importance, without ambitions, made bourgeois." Biffi went on to assert that the Risorgimento had in fact undermined Italy's stature: "Just at the moment when—with an 'Italian' government, an 'Italian' parliament, and an 'Italian' army—we were welcomed among the peoples as an autonomous, identifiable subject, it would seem that we no longer had anything to say to anyone." In the old days, when Italians had been divided into different states, "they continued to teach something to everyone." By contrast, "once they had achieved the hoped-for unity and political independence, they tried only to imitate a bit of everyone, especially the French and the English, up to the present day, when they have resigned themselves to being a cultural colony of the United States."
The big mistake, both of the Risorgimento's leaders and of liberals more generally, in Cardinal Biffi's estimation, was their failure to recognize Catholicism as the cornerstone of Italian national identity. Trying to establish a nation based on other principles—the principles of the Risorgimento—could only lead to disaster.13
Today there is little doubt in Rome who is the most powerful leader. One man alone is the object of great reverence, one man alone is seen as embodying society's deepest aspirations, a man whose every act is the object of adulatory front-page coverage in the press, even of the left. And were Garibaldi somehow to come to life and climb down from his horse on top of the Gianiculum, he would be better advised to keep his thoughts on the Vatican to himself. From the perspective of Italians of the twenty-first century, the hero of Italian unification, the Hero of Two Worlds, is looking more and more like an embarrassing crackpot.
* * *
Acknowledgments
Notes
References Cited
Illustration Sources
Index
* * *
Acknowledgments
THANKS ARE DUE, first of all, to Wendy Strothman and Eric Chinski, who both believed in this book from the beginning and who made me feel welcome at Houghton Mifflin. Eric's keen editorial eye and literary sensibility have resulted in a better book. Thanks, too, to Janet Silver at Houghton Mifflin for her strong support and for her help in crafting the final version of the book.
Authors whose books are based primarily on archival materials depend on the goodwill and aid of those who run and control the archives. This book is no exception. It has been made possible by help from archivists at the Vatican (particularly at the Archivio Segreto Vaticano and the Archivio della Congregrazione per gli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari), at the Archivio di Stato di Roma, and at the archives of the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères in Paris. I would like to thank in particular the director (Giuseppe Talamo), the curator (Marco Pizzo), and the archivist (Fabrizio Alberti) of the archives of the Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento Italiano in Rome for their help. Thanks too to Carmelo Catania for assisting me with the photographing of images at that archive. At the archive of the Museo Civico del Risorgimento, Bologna, I would like to thank the directors, Mirtide Gavelli and Otello Sangiorgi.
Valuable advice along the way was offered by Giuseppe Pizzorusso and Matteo Sanfilippo, who also read a much longer, early version of the manuscript and provided helpful comments. John A. Davis and Scott Lerner are also to be thanked for their comments on that draft, as are Paolo Zaninoni, my multitalented editor at Rizzoli, and Gian-vittorio Signorotto. Thanks to Michael Putnam for his help on my schoolboy Latin.
At Brown, I was greatly aided by my excellent research assistants, Simone Poliandri and Vika Zafrin. Erick Castellanos, Chiara Sartori, Jenny Asarnow, Kathy Grimaldi, Shirley Gordon, and Matilde Andrade also provided valuable assistance at Brown, and thanks are due to Laura Scotto and Vittoria Serafini for their work with archival material in Rome.
For their help in the final production process at Houghton Mifflin, I'd like to thank Meg Lemke, for her careful work in coordinating the publication process, and Luise Erdmann, whom I was fortunate to have as manuscript editor. Finally, my appreciation, as always, for all the support provided by my literary agent, Ted Chichak.
* * *
Notes
Abbreviations used for archival sources
ASV: Archivio Segreto Vaticano
SS: Segreteria di Stato
EM: Epoca Moderna
AAEESS: Archivio Storico, Sacra Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari
SE: Stati Ecclesiastici
ASR: Archivio di Stato di Roma
Questura di Roma
Prefettura di Roma
Tribunale Civile e Correzzionale
MAE: Archives, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris
CP: Correspondance Politique
MAES: MAE, Saint Siège
MAEI: MAE, Italie
Abbreviation used for published documents
DDI: Documenti diplomatici italiani, from series i, vol. 13 (1870), to series 2, vol. 22 (1889). Ministero degli Affari Esteri (1960–1997). Roma: Libreria di Stato.
Complete citations for nineteenth-century newspaper articles may be found in the endnotes. All other published works cited in the endnotes may be found in References Cited.
Prologue
1. Falti nuovi, p. 36.
Introduction: Italy's Birth and Near Demise
1. According to one estimate, only 2 percent of the population had played any role in bringing about Italian unification (Mazzonis 2003, p. 140).
2. This portrait of Bismarck is based largely on Pflanze (1990). The quotation is also from Pflanze (1990:46).
1. Destroying the Papal States
1. Aubert 1990b, p. 147.
2. Blakiston 1962, n. 292, Odo Russell to Earl R., 16 February 1864. Russell occupied a peculiar position because Britain had no official ambassador to the Holy See, so technically Russell had no diplomatic status in Rome. Yet despite this, and despite his known sympathy for the Italian liberals, he met regularly with Antonelli and often with the pope himself (d'Ideville 1875, p. 43).
3. Cadorna 1898, pp. 9–10. The move of the capital to Florence came at no small cost, outraging especially the citizens of Turin, where fifty-two died in protests.
4. Mack Smith 1989, pp. 21–22.
5. Tivaroni 1897, p. 285; Mundt's comments are quoted in Negro 1977, p. 161; Pirri 1958, pp. 102–3; Coppa 1990, p. 188.
6. Blakiston 1962, n. 303, O.R. to Earl R., 14 November 1864.
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7. Lawlessness and disorders of various kinds were rampant in the South in these years, the flames fanned by partisans of the old Bourbon dynasty and opponents of the new Italian state. Branding the problem one simply of brigandage, the government declared martial law and sent in large numbers of troops from the North to restore order.
8. Blakiston 1962, n. 305, O.R. to Earl R., 22 November 1864. On receiving Russell's report, the London foreign office decided that the British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, should read it himself. The note that he penciled in the margin shows that he shared Antonelli's and Prince Altomonte's interpretation of the French emperor's motives. "It has been evident for a long time," Palmerston wrote, "that the object of the Emperor as regards Italy is not its unity but its division into separate states."
9. Blakiston 1962, n. 310, O.R. to Earl R., 17 January 1865.
10. Blakiston 1962, n. 335, O.R. to Earl of C., 22 January 1866. The pope's remarks here are a paraphrase.
11. Blakiston 1962, n. 329, O.R. to Earl of C., 3 July 1866.
12. Blakiston 1962, n. 330, O.R. to the Earl of Clarendon, 10 July 1866.
13. Blakiston 1962, n. 353, O.R. to Lord Stanley, 27 July 1866; n. 354, O.R. to Lord'S., 23 August 1866; n. 357, O.R. to Lord'S., 4 December 1866; n. 359, O.R. to Lord'S., 15 December 1866.
14. Viallet 1991, pp. 336–37; Mack Smith 1956, pp. 158–61.
15. Mack Smith 1956, pp. 164–65.
16. Blakiston 1962, n. 349, O.R. to Lord'S., 16 January 1868; n. 383, O.R. to Lord'S., 26 March 1868.
2. The Pope Becomes Infallible
1. Quoted in Martina 1986, p. 329.
2. Martina 1986, p. 331: Pius IX letter to Franz Josef 19 February 1864.
3. Aubert 1990a.
4. This is my translation of the Italian text.
5. On the ties of the Jesuits to the aristocracy, see Aubert 1972, p. 8.
6. Blakiston 1962, n. 310, Odo Russell to Earl R„ Rome, 17 January 1865. Russell wrote of his meeting with Antonelli: "I am assured that he opposed its publication, but was overruled by the Pope, Merode, and the Jesuits, who are now all powerful in Rome."
7. Blakiston 1962, n. 309, Russell to Earl R., Rome, 17 January 1865.
8. Blakiston 1962, n. 337 and n. 336, Russell to Earl of C., Rome 26 March and 8 February 1866.
9. The English text of the 1868 call for the Council, with its Manichean language of the "vast evils" of modern times, can be found in Butler 1962, p. 69.
10. Quoted in Aubert 1990b, p. 492, Freppel to Larange, June 15,1869.
11. These letters are found in Hennesey 1963, pp. 82,175.
12. Quoted in Aubert 1990b, p. 487, Janus, Der Papst und das Konzil, Leipzig 1869, p. ix. On Dollinger, see Gadille 1968. On the origins of Quirinus, see Quirinus 1870.
13. Aubert 1990b, p. 492.
14. Opponents of infallibility, on the other hand, charged that the great overrepresentation of the Italians among those with voting rights at the Council was, in effect, disenfranchising the mass of Catholics elsewhere. While the German diocese of Breslau had but a single bishop for its 1.7 million Catholics, what was left of the Papal States, with only 700,000 inhabitants, was represented by 62 bishops. While Germany's 12 million Catholics had just 14 bishops, Naples and Sicily together had 62. As the Council was called to order, almost all of the Austrian, German, and Hungarian bishops stood against papal infallibility, as did many of the French. Yet there were many more Italian bishops than all of them put together (Martina 1995, p. 283; Quirinus 1870, pp. 140–41).
15. Aubert 1990b, p. 497; Martina 1986, p. 166; Hennesey 1963, pp. 36–37.
16. Gregorovius 1907, pp. 345, 347.
17. Blakiston 1962, n. 446, Russell to the Earl of C., Rome, 15 February 1870.
18. Blakiston 1962, n. 454, Earl of C. to O. R., 1 March 1870.
19. Gregorovius 1907, p. 366.
20. The English translation is mine. The Italian original reads: Quando Eva morse, e morder fece il porno, Gesù per salvar I'uom, si fece uomo; Mil il Vicario di Cristo, il Nono Pio Per render schiavo I'uom, si vuol far Dio. From Pasquino, cited by Gregorovius 1969, p. 359, in his diary on March 27, 1860.
21. Martina 1990a, pp. 173,175.
22. Martina 1990a, pp. 205–7, 555–57. The text of the conversation between Guidi and the pope comes from the account provided by Vincenzo Tizzani, who spoke with Cardinal Guidi immediately after the encounter.
23. Antonelli, who had no strong theological feelings on the question of infallibility—or on much else, for that matter—shared the minority's fears. In a June 3,1870, letter, an influential French bishop reported that Antonelli, despairing of the diplomatic damage that the impending pronouncement of infallibility would wreak, had said, "The Pope has already brought the Papal States to ruin, and now he wants to ruin the Church as well" (Martina 1990a, p. 210).
24. Even in this much milder form, the proposal continued to stir strong opposition among the bishops. As a result, when the infallibility doctrine was first put to a vote, on July 13,1870, the pope was doubly displeased. Not only was the version being voted on much weaker than he wanted, but a substantial number of bishops still refused to support it. With many bishops absenting themselves from St. Peter's rather than be forced either to break openly with the pope or to vote for a proposition they opposed, the infallibility doctrine obtained only 451 votes in favor, 62 in favor with reservations (placet juxta modum), and 88 against. It took courage for those 88 bishops to cast their votes against the wishes of the pope who had appointed virtually all of them. Curiously, among those who stayed away from the proceedings was Cardinal Antonelli himself (Martina 1990a, p. 212). Martina notes that roughly half of those voting in favor with reservations (placet juxta modum) did so because they thought the proposition was too weak. But he estimates that between the other half who voted placet juxta modum, due to opposition to declaring papal infallibility at all, and those who voted against and those who absented themselves out of opposition to the doctrine, at least a quarter of the episcopate were against even this mild form of papal infallibility.
25. Pflanze 1990, pp. 181–82.
26. DDI, series 1, vol. 13, n. 197, 212. Emerico Tkalac al Ministro degli Esteri Visconti Venosta, Roma, 18 and 19 luglio, 1870.
27. Gadille 1968, pp. 87,161; Otmar 1972, p. 297; Blakiston 1962, n. 535, Odo Russell to Earl G., Rome, 18 July 1870. Even before the first session of the Council, European governments were expressing alarm about the implications of a pronouncement of papal infallibility. In April 1869, for example, Bavaria's foreign minister expressed these concerns in a dispatch to Bavarian ambassadors abroad: "It is unlikely that the Council will occupy itself solely with doctrines of pure theology. The only dogmatic thesis that Rome would wish to be proclaimed at the Council is the papal infallibility. It is evident that this pretension raised to a dogma would pass beyond the purely spiritual domain, and would become a question eminently political, raising the power of the Pope, even on the temporal side, above all princes and peoples of Christendom. This doctrine is therefore of a nature to arouse the attention of all Governments with Catholic subjects" (Butler 1962, p. 77). Within months of the proclamation of papal infallibility, too, Dollinger would be excommunicated, and a splinter group of Old Catholics would form in Germany (Gallon 1971).
3. The Last Days of Papal Rome
1. DDI, series 1, vol. 13, n. 350, II conte Kulczycki al Segretario Generale degli Affari Esteri Blanc, Terni, 1 agosto 1870.
2. DDI, series 1, vol. 13, n. 341, II conte Kulczycki al Segretario Generale degli Affari Esteri Blanc, Terni, 30 luglio 1870.
3. Rothan 1885, vol. 2, p. 67.
4. Wetzel 2001, pp. 20–23.
5. English-language accounts of the Franco-Prussian War include Howard (1961) and Wawro (2003).
6. Duggan 2000, pp. 380–82.
7. Howard 1961, pp. 64–65.
8. Duggan 2000, pp. 383–85.
9. DDI, series 1, vol. 13, n. 212, Tkalac to Visconti Venosta, 19 luglio 1870.
10. DDI, series 1, vol. 13, n. 357, II conte Kulczycki al Segretario Generale degli Affari Esteri Blanc, Terni, 2 agosto 1870.
11. L'Osservatore Romano, 1 agosto 1870, p. 1; 2 agosto 1870, p. 3.
12. Mack Smith 1994b, pp. 204–11.
13. Cadorna 1889, pp. 28,35.
14. With the Holy See no longer protected by French troops, some in the Vatican turned to the Prussians, praying that they would take the place of their defeated foe. Rumors of promises by King Wilhelm to come to the pope's aid soon began to circulate in the Holy City. On August 16, the British envoy in Rome commented: "It is remarkable to hear how confidently support is expected to come to the papacy from the Protestant Powers, whose Catholic populations are supposed to be sufficiently powerful to exact for it from their governments more or less active protection against its enemies." (Halperin 1939, pp. 32–33.)
Two days later Count Kulczycki reported that the Jesuits, aware that the days of papal control of Rome were dwindling, were urging the pope to flee. He could either escape to Malta or to Germany, confident that he would soon be returned to power behind the Prussian army. The Jesuits, in the meantime, were frantically arranging fictitious sales of their considerable property holdings in Rome to cooperative nonclericals, certain that one of the first acts of the Italian government once its soldiers arrived would be to expropriate their property and send the Company of Jesus packing. As it turned out, their fears were fully justified. (DDI, series 1, vol. 13, n. 528, Il conte Kulczycki al Segretario Generale degli Affari Esteri Blanc, Terni, 18 agosto 1870.)
15. Martina 1972, p. 91.
Prisoner of the Vatican Page 37
