It was by no means to indulge his own pious feelings, or to gratify the clergy and Catholic people, that the venerable Pontiff invited so many from Italy and all parts of the Christian world to take part with him in celebrating these canonizations, and, at the same time, the eighteen hundredth anniversary of the martyrdom of the blessed Apostles, the founders of the Church. His object was to edify, to place in contrast with, and in opposition to, the worldly and unbelieving spirit of the time the teachings and the solemn offices of religion, together with the power of holiness, so admirably shown forth in the lives and glory of the saints. The revolution aimed at nothing less than the destruction of everything spiritual. It was good for it to be taught that true spirituality is beyond its reach.
It would hardly be fair to contrast as purely worldly the grand exposition at Paris, the World's Fair, with the religious celebrations at Rome. The rich and varied display of the objects of art and industry, in the beautiful capital of France, was the result of an advanced Christian civilization. It was recognized as such by the greatest statesmen, the ablest men of science, and the wisest rulers of the age. No doubt it savored more of the world and of things worldly than the festivals at Rome. But the holy city bore it no grudge. It was [pg 280] other powers and other arts than those which furnished out so grandly the Parisian exposition against which Rome waged perpetual war. A Roman, let it not be forgotten, and not the least pious among the Romans, the illustrious scientist, Father Secchi, whose recent decease the world laments, took the highest honors at the great industrial and artistic fair.
Paris, indeed, was in contrast with Rome, but more by its materialist philosophy than by its magnificent exhibition of material improvements. This philosophy availed itself of the exposition in order to show to what extent it prevailed; and Paris extolled mere worldly power, luxury, comfort and voluptuousness, whilst Rome had no praise but for humility, poverty, self-denial, chastity. Paris applauded Alexander II., who massacred the Poles; Rome, on the other hand, did honor to a Polish bishop, Joseph Kunicievicz, who was cruelly murdered by Russian fanaticism. Paris celebrated the apotheosis of free-thinking and religious indifference; Rome, on the contrary, heaped honors on an Inquisitor, Peter d'Arbues, who suffered martyrdom. Paris was loud in her acclamations to the potentates and conquerors of the day, whilst Rome exalted an humble shepherdess, Germaine Cousin, and some poor and obscure monks who were hanged by heretics three hundred years ago, in a small town of Holland. Yet was not Paris distinguished only by material glories, nor was Rome altogether free from the taint of modern worldliness. There were those in the latter city who, in the midst of an atmosphere of pious thought, plotted deeds of diabolic wickedness, whilst Paris, which honored the arts, was not without sympathy at Rome, and her prelates, the bishops of France, were far from being the least among those five hundred high dignitaries, twenty thousand priests of God's Church, and more than one hundred and fifty thousand Christian people from all quarters of the known world, who took part in celebrating the glorious centenary and the no less glorious victory of more than two hundred martyrs. The display of art, industry and modern improvements of very kind presented, indeed, in the midst of the beautiful [pg 281] French capital, a magnificent and cheering sight. It was nothing, however, to the moral spectacle afforded by the presence of ten or twelve mighty sovereigns around the now Imperial author of the coup d'etat. It was supremely worldly. Who would then have said that William of Prussia, and Napoleon III., the Czar of Russia, and the successor of the caliphs, who, at the exhibition fetes, joined hands in apparent friendship, were so soon to be engaged in deadly strife? and that that capital, where so many great potentates came to honor Napoleon, should, in a year or two, know him no more, and even struggle with all the energy of desperation to obliterate every vestige of the improvements with which he had so enriched and beautified the city? This was the world; for the world is insincere. This was the world; for the figure thereof passeth quickly away.
In Rome it was not so. There art and religion walked hand in hand. Religion fostered art. Art was dutiful, and repaid the boon. It became the handmaid of religion. Everywhere within the walls of her temples were seen the products of art's filial labor, in sculpture, painting, poetry and music, her inexhaustible treasury of thought and history ever presenting new sources of artistic power to the hand of genius. Those temples themselves being, indeed, the finest monuments of architecture, bear glorious witness to the excellent union of art and religion. Worldliness, on the other hand, when at the height of its passion against religion, seeks to destroy all the creations of art and genius. It aims at nothing less than to reduce mankind to the condition of the savage, and is not ashamed to acknowledge that such is its aim.
Let us hear the testimony of the Roman artists. This body, on the one hand, rejoiced in the coming celebration of the centenary; on the other, they were filled with sad forebodings as to the approaching downfall of the Papal sovereignty by the threats of Garibaldi and the predictions of Mazzini. They resolved, therefore, whilst yet the Pope, who, like his predecessors, had shown them much kindness, and munificently [pg 282] rewarded their labors, reigned at Rome, to present to him a dutiful and affectionate address, which should remain, in time to come, as a testimony of their gratitude to that beneficent sovereignty which they had but too much reason to fear would soon come to an end. This address is so important and tells so much truth, that it is deserving of a place in all histories. It is as follows: “Most Holy Father, religion, policy and mere human wisdom have protested in favor of the temporal power of the Papacy. The arts come, in their turn, to lay their homage at the feet of your Holiness, and to proclaim to the world that this power is to them indispensable. Their voice must be heard and listened to. For when the tide of generations recedes, the arts remain as the irrefutable witnesses of the power and splendor of the civilization amid which these generations lived. The sovereigns who encourage and develop them acquire immortal renown; those who neglect or oppress them meet only with the contempt of posterity. What royal dynasty has in this respect deserved so well of civilization and humanity as that of the Sovereign Pontiffs? They have been the watchful guardians of the master-pieces bequeathed to us by antiquity. They have given these a home in their own palaces to show that religion adopts and ennobles all that is truly beautiful. It is the Sovereign Pontiffs who, by opening new avenues for modern art, have brought it to the point of perfection, embodied in the master-pieces of Raphael and Michael Angelo. They alone support in Rome that unique assemblage of all that is beautiful in every order, that splendid intellectual galaxy in whose light the artists of every land are formed. Holy Father, the little spot of earth which the revolution has not yet taken from you is the only place in which the arts find the inspiration that is for them the breath of life, and the quiet without which that life cannot expand. The soul of the true artist is filled with unspeakable apprehension by the possibility of seeing these master-pieces destroyed or scattered abroad, these treasures plundered, all this wealth annihilated; and especially by the danger of seeing the ungraceful and [pg 283] meagre forms of modern utilitarianism usurp the place held by the manners, the habits, the face of all things in this privileged land of beauty, all consecrated by the admiration of ages. Alas! Holy Father, what is happening in the rest of Italy affords but too firm a ground for such apprehensions. The genius of destruction is abroad there, and proceeds to sweep away pitilessly what was the glory of ancient Italy. The spoliation and suppression of the religious orders are one of the most deadly blows ever aimed at the existence of the fine arts. Saddened by those forebodings, fearful of what the future may bring forth, the artists resident in Rome come to the feet of your Holiness to give utterance to their deep conviction that the splendor, the greatness, the very existence of the fine arts in Europe are inseparably connected with the maintenance of the beneficent power of the Sovereign Pontiffs. Were it not that the rival passions which divide Europe are of themselves fatally blind to consequences, the reign of your Holiness would suffice to render this truth evident to all. For while elsewhere national wealth is wasted in frivolous undertakings, or in preparing instruments of destruction, the modest revenues inherited by your Holiness are ever employed in continuing gloriously the noble labor of your predecessors. On the one hand, you have drawn from obscurity the beginnings of Christian art, thereby affording it new and precious data; on the other, you have adorned Rome and the Vatican with works which furnish a new and brilliant page to the grand history of art embodied in the Vatican itself. While elsewhere reigned trouble and agitation, here artists were able, beneath the blessed sway of your Holiness, to enjoy a kindly welcome, an unrestrained liberty, and the peaceful contemplation of those venerable structures and sites preserved so happily by the Pontifical government from the sad alterations blindly wrought in other cities by the troublous life of modern communities. May the Almighty One hear our prayer, and persuade both sovereigns and nations that their honor and glory will be measured, in coming ages, on the degree of protection they [pg 284] shall have afforded to the temporal power of the Papacy, which has ever been the unwearied promoter of the development of all the noblest faculties in man, and which alone can continue to be the custodian of the works of art originated by itself, and by it so faithfully treasured for the benefit of all peoples!” This eloquent address will ever remain carefully guarded by history, a noble monument of gratitude, and not only this, but also as a testimony, all the more valuable as it is the spontaneous utterance of men of the most cultivated intellect, in favor of that sovereignty the destruction of which was sought, and has been accomplished, by a party in whose ranks could be counted only rude soldiers, bands of filibusters and politicians, if such they could be called, whose counsels were inspired, not by the wisdom which distinguishes statesmen, but by blind passion, and the most unworthy of all passions, the passion of hatred—hatred of everything connected with the Christian faith.
The great centennial celebration proceeded. Who would have dared to say, whilst Nero reigned at Rome, and Christians were as pariahs, tolerated only in order to afford the spectacle of their tortures to a heathen multitude, that eighteen hundred years from Nero's time, Christianity would flourish and celebrate in that city, which was the scene of its greatest trials, as well as all over the world, its victory and the glorious martyrdom of its apostolic founders! The month of June, 1867, will ever be memorable in the annals of the church. Never had so many bishops assembled in the holy city. Nor were there ever there, at one time, so many priests and pilgrims of all ranks and classes. The duties of the time were commenced early in the month. On the 11th and 12th of June, consistories were held in presence of the bishops, in order to make preparation for the canonization of two hundred and five Japanese Christians—priests, catechists, laymen, women and children—put to death in hatred of the Christian faith, from 1617 to 1632. On the 26th of February, 1867, the decree of canonization had already been solemnly read in presence of [pg 285] Pius IX., who, on the occasion, went in state to the Roman College. On the 22nd February of the same year, the Holy Father signed decrees bearing on the beatification of several holy persons, among whom was Clement Maria Hofbauer, a Redemptorist. In an age of unbelief, it was only to be expected that the enquiry should be made why the Pope made so many saints?
In February, 1867, his Holiness replied, on occasion of a visit to the Convent of the Capuchin Friars: “I have been shown,” said he, “a pamphlet, entitled ‘Why so many Saints?’ Had we ever so much need of intercessors in heaven and patterns in this world?” A little later he also said, alluding to the festivals at Paris: “Man has not been placed on the earth solely in order to amass wealth; still less in order to lead a life of pleasure. The world is ignorant of this. It forgets mind, and devotes itself to matter. Neither you nor I are this world of which I speak. You are come here in the good disposition to seek the edification of your souls. I hope, therefore, that you will bear away with you a salutary impression. Never forget, my children, that you have a soul, a soul created in the image of God, and which God will judge. Bestow on it more thought and care than on industrial speculations, railways, and all those lesser objects which constitute the good things of this world. I forbid you not to interest yourselves in such transient matters. Do so reasonably and moderately. But let me once more beg of you to remember that you have a soul.”
None of the ten or twelve potentates who visited Paris came to Rome. But their absence was amply made up for by the immense concourse of clergy and people from every quarter of the civilized world. The reverence shown to Pius IX. by so many prelates was truly admirable. A Chinese bishop, Mgr. Languillat, Vicar-apostolic of Nankin, coming for the first time into the presence of the Supreme Pastor, fell prostrate on the threshold, and with his arms extended towards the Pontiff, began to exclaim: “Tu es Petrus!” (“Thou art Peter!”)
“Come to me, my brother,” said the Holy Father. “Tu es Petrus!” replied the Chinese bishop, “Tu es Petrus!” Needless to say that when he approached the venerable Pontiff affectionately embraced him, whilst both gave vent to their feelings in tears. The laity of all ranks and classes were no less devoted. A very moving scene which was witnessed this same year (1867) is beautifully described by the Protestant correspondent of the London Morning Post: “It is truly delightful to meet Pius IX. in the country on foot, walking faster than one would suppose his age could allow, his majestic person arrayed in a white soutane, and protected by a large broad-brimmed purple hat. The other day, when I was at Aricia, he was proceeding towards Genzano, followed by his guards and his carriage. The ex-Queen of Naples and the Infanta, lately Regent, were walking in the opposite direction, followed by their equipages and domestics. At a turn of the road, exactly below the Villa Chigi, the two groups met. In a moment their Royal Majesties were on their knees. His Holiness quickened his pace in order to raise them up. The peasants of the neighborhood, who were returning from their vineyards and orchards, together with their wives and daughters, were struck with admiration. They also advanced and knelt on each side of the central group formed by the illustrious personages, calling out with all their might: ‘Santo Padre, la benedizione.’ ‘Holy Father, your benediction!’ It was a splendid tableau.”
On occasion of the centennial, substantial proofs of devotedness abounded. The numerous pilgrims not only gave the homage of their faith, but also brought magnificent offerings, as Peter's pence, and presented addresses with millions of signatures. One day fifteen hundred Italians were received at an audience of the Holy Father, and made the offering of a monumental album, together with one hundred purses filled with gold, as the homage of one hundred Italian cities. Cardinal Manning laid at the feet of Pius IX. £30,000—a generous testimony of English piety. The Cardinal Archbishop of Mechlin brought to the centenary celebration £16,000, the Archbishop [pg 287] of Posen £20,000, and the Mexican archbishop £12,000, whilst Cuba offered 100,000 douros. “We are reversing the order of nature,” smilingly observed the Holy Father; “here are the children supporting the Father.” Nor was it too much for the wants of such a Father. He received with one hand and generously dispensed with the other. He took charge himself to lodge and entertain eighty-five of the poorer bishops from Italy, the East, and remote missions. None of these were allowed to depart without receiving abundant aid for their diocesan good works.