The life of Cardinal Mezzofanti / With an introductory memoir of eminent linguists, ancient and modern

by Charles William Russell

Spiritus: et Nonus prodiitecce Pius![545]

During the pontificate of Gregory XVI., Cardinal Mezzofanti never held any office of state; nor did the change of sovereign make any change in his rank or his occupations. He was, of course, continued by the new government in all his appointments; and the new Pope, Pius IX., regarded him with the same friendship and favour which he had enjoyed at the hands of his predecessor. In the social and political changes which ensued, Mezzofanti, from his non-political character, had no part. No one sympathized more cordially with the beneficent intentions of his Sovereign; but, completely shut out as he was by his position from political affairs, he pursued his quiet career, with all its wonted regularity, through the very hottest excitement of the eventful years of 1847 and 1848.

Many visitors who conversed with him in these, the last years of his life, have repeated to me the accounts which have already become familiar from the reports of those who knew him in earlier years. The fulfilment of his public duties as Cardinal;—the care of the institutions over which an especial charge had been assigned him;—the confessional, whenever his services were sought by a foreigner;—above all, his beloved pupils in the Propaganda—these formed for him the business of life.

“Almost every evening, when I was in the College of the Propaganda,” says F. Bresciani, “he would come to exercise himself with these dear pupils, who are collected there from all nations of the world, to be educated in sacred and profane literature and in the apostolic spirit. Then, as he conversed with me in the halls of the Propaganda when the pupils were returning from their evening walks, he would go to meet them as he saw them coming up the steps, and, as they passed him, would say something to them in their own languages; speaking to one, Chinese; to another, Armenian; to a third, Greek; to a fourth, Bulgarian. This one he would accost in Arabic, that, in Ethiopic, Geez, or Abyssinian; now he would speak in Russian, then in Albanian, in Persian, in Peguan, in Coptic, in English, in Lithuanian, in German, in Danish, in Georgian, in Kurdish, in Norwegian, in Swedish. Nor was there ever any risk that he should get entangled, or that a word of another language or a wrong pronunciation should escape him.”[546]...

“Every year, from the time of his coming to Rome, even after he had been made Cardinal, he used to assist the students in composing their several national odes for the Polyglot Academy of the Propaganda, which is held during the octave of the Epiphany, and in which the astonished foreigners who witness it behold a living emblem of the unity of the Catholic Church, which alone is able, through the Holy Spirit that vivifieth her, to show forth in one fraternity the union of all tongues, in praising and blessing the Lord who created us and redeemed us by the blood of Jesus Christ. Now the Cardinal, in these fifty tongues and upwards, in which the pupils composed, would make all the necessary corrections whether of thought, metre, or phrase, with all, and perhaps more than all, the facility and exactness of others in writing poetry in their native tongue. After he had corrected the compositions, he would take his beloved pupils, one by one, and instruct them in the proper mode of reciting and pronouncing each. And, as some of them occasionally had entered college when very little boys, and had forgotten some of the tones or cadence of their native languages, he would come to their aid by suggesting these, testing and correcting them with the utmost gentleness and patience.”[547]

It would be out of place here to enter into any detail of the startling and violent changes by which these tranquil occupations were rudely interrupted. The Cardinal had watched with deep anxiety the gradually increasing demands with which each successive generous and confiding measure of the administration of Pius IX. had been met; but even his sagacious mind, schooled as it had already been in the vicissitudes of former revolutions, was not prepared for the succession of terrible events which crowded themselves into the last few weeks of the “year of revolution”—the furious demands of the clubs—the expulsion of the Jesuits—the assassination of De Rossi—the obtrusion of a republican ministry—the flight of the Pope—the proclamation of the Republic. Amid all the terrors of the time, he had but one thought—gratitude for the safety of the Pope. He was urged by his friends to imitate the example of the main body of the Cardinals, and to follow his Sovereign to Gaeta or Naples; but he refused to leave Rome, and continued through all the scenes of violence which followed the flight of Pius IX., to live, without any attempt at concealment, at his old quarters in the Palazzo Valentiniani.

Nevertheless, although, personally, Cardinal Mezzofanti suffered no molestation, the alarm and anxiety inseparable from such a time, could not fail to tell upon a constitution, at no time robust, and of late years much enfeebled. From the beginning of the year 1849, his strength began sensibly to diminish. It was characteristic of the man that even all the terrors of the period could not make him forget his favourite festival of the Epiphany; and that, among the numberless more deplorable changes which surrounded him, he still had a regret for the absence of the accustomed Polyglot Academy of the Propaganda. Before the middle of January he became so weak, that it was with the utmost difficulty he was able to say mass in his private chapel. While he was in this state of extreme debility, he was seized with an alarming attack of pleurisy; and although the acute symptoms were so far relieved at the end of January, that his family entertained sanguine hopes of his recovery, this illness was followed, in the early part of February, by an attack of gastric fever, by which the slender remains of his strength were speedily exhausted.

The venerable sufferer at once became sensible of his condition. From the very first intimation of his danger, he had commenced his preparation for death, with all the calm and simple piety which had characterised his life. In accordance with one of our beautiful Catholic customs—at once most holy in themselves, and an admirable help even to the sublimest piety—he at once entered upon a Novena, or nine days’ devotion, to St. Joseph; who, as, according to an old tradition, his own eyes were closed in death by the blessed hands of his divine Saviour, has been adopted by Catholic usage as the Patron of the Dying, and who was besides the name-saint and especial Patron of the Cardinal himself. In these pious exercises he was accompanied by his chaplain, by his nephews, Gaetano and Pietro, and above all, by his niece, Anna, who was most tenderly attached to him, and was inconsolable at the prospect of his death. He himself fixed the time for receiving the Holy Viaticum and the Extreme Unction. They were administered by Padre Ligi, parish priest of the Church of SS. Apostoli, assisted by the Cardinal’s chaplain, and by his confessor, Padre Proja, now Sacristan of St. Peter’s. The chaplain and the members of his family frequently assembled at his bed-side, to accompany and assist him in his dying devotions; and the intervals between these common prayers, in which all alike took part, were filled up with pious readings by Anna Minarelli, and with short prayers of the holy Cardinal himself. “Dio mio! abbiate pietà di me!” “My God, have mercy on me!”—was his ever recurring ejaculation, mingled occasionally with prayers for the exiled Pontiff, for the welfare of his widowed Church, and for the peace of his distracted country. “Abbiate pietà della Chiesa! Preghiamo per lei!”