The official revenue assigned from the Civil List for a cardinal resident in Rome, is four thousand Roman crowns (between eight and nine hundred pounds sterling); by far the greater part of which is absorbed in the necessary expenses of his household, the payment of his chaplain, secretary, and servants, the maintenance of his state equipage, &c.; so that for those cardinals who, like Mezzofanti, possess no private fortune, the remnant available for purely personal expenditure is very trifling indeed. With Mezzofanti’s frugal and simple habits, however, it not only proved amply sufficient to supply all his own modest wants, but also enabled him to enlarge and extend the unostentatious charities which, throughout his entire life, he had never failed to bestow, even while he was himself struggling against the disadvantages of a narrow and precarious income. So well known, indeed, were his almost prodigal charities, while in charge of the Vatican, and his consequent poverty at the time of his nomination to the Cardinalate, that the Pope, Gregory XVI., himself presented him, from the Pontifical establishment, the two state carriages[501] which form the necessary equipage of a Cardinal in all processions and other occasions of public ceremonial.
He selected for his residence the Palazzo Valentiniani, in the Piazza SS. Apostoli; where his nephew, Gaetano Minarelli, and Anna, one of his unmarried nieces, came to live with him on his nomination to the Cardinalate, and continued to reside until his death.
The news of his elevation was received with great pleasure at Bologna, and was the occasion of many public and private demonstrations. The most remarkable of these was from the Academy of the Filopieri, of which he had been the President at the time of his removal from Bologna. The Italians are singularly conservative of established forms; the members of the Academy, in accordance with a usage which may almost be called classical, met in full assembly (with all the accompaniments of decorations, inscriptions, and music, in which Italian taste is displayed on such occasions), to congratulate their fellow-academician. The congratulatory addresses, however, which in England would have been a set of speeches and resolutions, here, as became the “Lovers of the Muses,” took a poetical form; and a series of odes, sonnets,[502] elegies, canzoni, terzine, and epigrams, in Greek, Latin, and Italian, were recited by the members. Some of them are exceedingly spirited and graceful. They were all collected into a little volume, which, with great delicacy and good taste, is dedicated not to the Cardinal himself, but to his nephew, Monsignor Joseph Minarelli, of whom I have already spoken, and who was at this time Rector of the university of Bologna.[503]
A still more characteristic tribute on his elevation was a polyglot visit of congratulation from his young friends in the Propaganda. A party of fifty-three, comprising all the languages and nationalities at that time represented in the institution, waited upon him to offer their greetings in their various tongues. The new Cardinal was at once amused by the novel exhibition, and gratified by the compliment thus delicately implied. True, however, to his old character for readiness and dexterity, he was found fully equal to the occasion, and answered each in his own language with great spirit and precision.[504]
Cardinal Mezzofanti’s elevation, of course, brought him into closer, and, if possible, more affectionate relations with the Pope. Among his brethren of the Sacred College, too, there were many whom, even as prelate, he could call his friends. I have already spoken of his relations with the learned Cardinal Giustiniani, and the venerable Cardinal Pacca. With Cardinal Lambruschini, the Secretary of State, and Cardinal Fransoni, Prefect of the Propaganda, he had long been on a footing of most confidential intimacy. His especial friends, however, were Cardinals Mai, Polidori, Bernetti, and the amiable and learned English Cardinal Acton, who, although not proclaimed till 1842, was named in petto in the year after the elevation of Cardinal Mezzofanti.[505]
But, with the exception of the public and ceremonial observances which his new dignity exacted, it brought no change in his simple, and almost ascetic manner of life. The externals of his household, of course, underwent considerable alteration, but his personal habits remained the same. He continued to rise at the same hour: his morning devotions, his daily mass, his visits to the hospitals, and other private acts of charity, remained unaltered. His table, though displaying somewhat more ceremonial, continued almost as frugal, and entirely as simple, as before his elevation. He persevered, unless when prevented by his various official duties, in paying his daily visit to the Propaganda, and in assisting and directing the studies of its young inmates, with all his accustomed friendliness and familiarity. His affability to visitors, even of the humblest class, was, if possible, increased. Above all, as regarded his favourite studies, and the exercise of his wonderful talent, his elevation to the Cardinalate brought no abatement of enthusiasm, and no relaxation of energy. It is not merely that the visitors who saw him as Cardinal, concur in attesting the unaltered activity of his mind, and the undiminished interest with which he availed himself of every new opportunity of perfecting or exercising his favourite accomplishment. For years after his elevation, he continued to add zealously and successfully to the stores which he had already laid up. There is distinct evidence that after this period, (although he had now entered upon his sixty-fourth year,) he acquired several languages, with which he had previously had little, and perhaps no acquaintance.
A very interesting instance has been communicated to me by M. Antoine d’Abbadie,[506] who visited the Cardinal in 1839, at Rome. M. d’Abbadie had been a traveller from early manhood. Setting out in the year 1837, in company with his brother Arnauld, to explore the sources of the White Nile, he traversed the greater part of north eastern Africa. Their wanderings, however, proved a mission of religion and charity, no less than of science. During their long and varied intercourse with the several tribes of Abyssinia, they observed with painful interest that strange admixture of primitive Catholic truth with gross and revolting superstition by which all travellers have been struck; and their first care was to study carefully the condition of the country and the character of the people, with a view to the organization of a judicious and effective missionary expedition by which their many capabilities for good might be developed. Hence, it is that, while their letters, reports, and essays, communicated to the various scientific journals and societies of France and England,[507] have added largely to our knowledge of the languages,[508] the geography, and the natural history of these imperfectly explored provinces, their services to the Church by the introduction of missionaries, by the advice and information which they have uniformly afforded them, and even by their own personal co-operation in the great work, have entitled them to the gratitude of all to whom the interests of truth and civilization are dear.
M. Antoine d’Abbadie, after two years spent in such labours, returned to Europe in 1839, for the purpose of preparing himself for a further and more systematic exploration. On arriving in Rome, he took an early opportunity of waiting upon the Cardinal, accompanied by two Abyssinians, who spoke only the Amarinna language, and by a Galla servant, whose native (and only) language was the Ilmorma, a tongue almost entirely unknown, even to the learned in this branch of philology.[509] M. d’Abbadie himself spoke Basque, a language which was still new to Mezzofanti; and he was thus witness of what was certainly a very unwonted scene—the great Polyglottist completely at fault.
“I saw Cardinal Mezzofanti,” writes M. d’Abbadie, “in 1839. He asked me in Arabic what language I wished to speak, and I, in order to test him, proposed conversing in Basque. I am far from knowing this idiom well; but, as I transact my farmer’s business in Basque, I can easily puzzle a foreigner in it. The Cardinal waived my proposal, and asked me what African language I would speak. I now spoke Amarinna, i.e., the language named Ancharica by Ludolf, who probably added the final c in order to suit the word to Latin articulation. Not being able to answer in Amarinna, Mezzofanti said: Ti amirnu timhirta lisana Gi-iz (‘Have you the knowledge of the Gi-iz language?’) This was well said, and beautifully pronounced, but shewed that the Cardinal got his knowledge of Gi-iz from persons who read, but did not speak it in general. I afterwards ascertained in Abyssinia that no professor, i.e., no person accustomed to colloquial Gi-iz, had been yet in Rome, during this century at least. I may here mention that Gi-iz, generally called Ethiopic in Europe, is the liturgical language in Abyssinia, where it is looked on by the learned as a dead language, although it is still spoken by at least one of the shepherd tribes near the Red Sea. In my visit to Cardinal Mezzofanti, I had with me two Amara Abyssines, with whom he could not speak, as neither of them knew Gi-iz enough, and I had not yet learned that language. My third companion was a Galla, who had taught me his language, viz., Ilmorma, in a most tedious way, for he knew no other tongue, and I was forced to elicit every meaning by a slowly convergent series of questions, which I put every time he used a word new to me. Some of these had until then remained a mystery to me; as the word self, and some others of the same abstract class. I had likewise laboured in vain to get the Ilmorma word for ‘soul’; and having mentioned all this to Mezzofanti, I added, that as a philologist and a father of the church, he could render me no better service than giving me the means of teaching my Galla barbarian that he had a soul to be saved. ‘Could not your eminence,’ said I, ‘find the means of learning from this African what is the word for soul? I have written twelve hundred words of his language, which you will certainly turn to better account than I can.’ The Cardinal made no direct answer. I saw him several times afterwards, and he always addressed me in Arabic; but, being a tyro in that language, I could not pretend to judge his knowledge or fluency. However, a native Syrian then in Rome, told me that both were admirable: this referred, I suppose now, to the Syrian dialect.”