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

by Charles William Russell

The year 1814, so memorable in general history, was also an important one in the humble fortunes of the Abate Mezzofanti.

The success of the papal cause in Italy naturally opened a new career to the men against whom fidelity to the papal interest had long closed the ordinary avenues to distinction.

In the close of 1813, the reverses, which, from the disastrous Russian expedition, had succeeded each other with startling rapidity, at length forced upon Napoleon the conviction that he had overcalculated the endurance of the people of France. He now learned, when too late, that the reckless expenditure of human blood with which his splendid successes were purchased, had brought sorrow and suffering to every fireside in every hamlet through his wide empire, and that the enormous levies which he still continued to demand, and which were called out only to perish in the fruitless contest with his destiny, consummated the popular discontent. No longer, therefore, in a position to brave the public reprobation with which his treatment of Pius VII. had been visited, he found it necessary to restore the semblance of those more friendly relations which he had maintained with him in the less openly ambitious stage of his career. Accordingly, although among the provisions of the extorted Concordat of Fontainebleau, there was none to which Napoleon, in his secret heart, clung more tenaciously than the renunciation which it implied on the part of the Pontiff of the sovereignty of Rome, he found it necessary, notwithstanding, to yield so far to public sympathy as to issue an order for the Pope’s immediate return to Italy, dated the 22nd of January, 1814. This measure, nevertheless, had evidently been extorted from his fears; and, as he desired nothing from it beyond the effect which he expected it to produce on the public mind, he contrived that upon various pretences the Pope’s progress should be interrupted and delayed. For a short time, too, the varying success with which the memorable campaign of 1814 commenced; the opening of the Congress of Chatillon; the conclusion of the armistice of Lusigny;—all served to re-animate his sinking hopes. Thus the Pope was detained day after day, week after week, in the south of France, until the close of the Emperor’s death struggle, by the capitulation of Paris; when Pius VII. was at length set free to return to his capital, by an order of the provisional government, dated the 2nd of April, 1814.

Within a few days after the communication of this order, Pius VII. reached Bologna. Among the ecclesiastics who there hastened to offer homage to their restored sovereign, there were few who could approach his throne with a fuller consciousness of unsullied loyalty, or who could present more unequivocal evidences of the truth and sincerity of the allegiance which they tendered, than the ex-Professor Mezzofanti, driven from his chair because he refused to compromise his loyalty even by an indirect recognition of the Anti-Papal government, and only restored, when, after the concordat of 1801, the occupation of the Legations had been acquiesced in by the Pontificial government itself, he had a second time suffered the penalty of loyalty in a similar deprivation. It will easily be believed, therefore, that, in the more than gracious reception accorded to him by the Pontiff, a feeling of grateful recognition of his fidelity and of sympathy with the sacrifices which he had made, was mingled with undisguised admiration of his talents and acquirements.

Hence the first impulse of this munificent pope was to attach to his own immediate service a scholar who was at once eminent for learning, distinguished by piety, by priestly zeal, and by loyalty in the hour of trial, unstained even by the slightest compromise. The re-construction of the various Roman tribunals and congregations which, during the captivity of the Pope and Cardinals, had been, for the most part, suspended, suggested an opportunity of employing, with marked advantage for the public service, the peculiar talents which seemed almost idly wasted in the obscurity of a provincial capital. The halls and public offices of Rome had been the school or the arena of all the celebrated linguists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and the very constitution of the congregation and college, “De Propaganda Fide,” appeared specially to invite the services of one so eminent in that department. Accordingly, Pius VII. surprised the modest Abate by an invitation to accompany him to Rome, and proposed for his acceptance the important office of the secretaryship of the Propaganda[358]—one of those so called poste cardinalizie, which constitute the first step in the career towards the cardinalate.

Mezzofanti was deeply affected by this mark of the favour and confidence of his sovereign. Independently, too, of these flattering considerations, and of the advantages of rank and fortune which it involved, the mere residence in Rome, and especially in the Propaganda—the great polyglot centre of the ancient and modern world—had many attractions for a student of language so enthusiastic and indefatigable. It was a proud thought, moreover, to follow in the track of Ubicini, and Giorgi, and Piromalli, and the Assemani’s. But his modesty was proof against all these temptations. He shrank from the responsibility which this great office involved;—and, with the every expression of gratitude for so distinguished an honour, he declined to exchange the quiet and seclusion of his life at Bologna, for the more brilliant, but far more anxious position held out for his acceptance at Rome.

Not content, however, with personal solicitations, the Pope employed Cardinal Consalvi to use his influence with Mezzofanti. But it was to no purpose. The humble Abate could not be induced to leave his native city. The only mark of favour, therefore, which remained at the disposal of the pontiff, was one which Mezzofanti prized infinitely beyond the more solid, as well as more brilliant, offer which awaited him at Rome,—his re-establishment in the Professorship of Oriental Languages. He was formally restored on the 28th of April, 1814,[359] a few days after the departure of the Pope from Bologna.

There is no doubt that on this occasion, as on that of his declining the invitation to Paris several years earlier, he was much influenced by those considerations, arising from his relations to the children of his sister, to which I already alluded, his presence in Bologna being now more than ever necessary for the completion of their education. Indeed this was now the chief family duty which bound him to Bologna; for his father, who had survived his mother by several years, died, at the advanced age of eighty-one, in April, 1814, during the visit of Pius VII. to that city.

The few notices of the Abate Mezzofanti which we have met up to this period, are derived almost exclusively from Bolognese, or at least Italian sources. During the long continental war, the ordinary intercourse with Italy was, in great part, suspended, and few tourists, especially of the literary class, visited the north of Italy. But the cessation of hostilities in the spring of 1814, re-opened the long interrupted communication, and the annual stream of visitors to Rome and Naples again began to flow, with its wonted regularity, through the cities of the north. Few of the tourists who published an account of their travels at this date failed to devote some of their pages to one who had now become one of the chief “sights” of his native city. It is hardly necessary to say, that, in some instances, these accounts are but the echoes of popular fame, and exhibit the usual amount of ignorance, credulity, and superficial information, which characterise “travellers’ tales.” But very many, also, will be found to contain the judgment of acute, learned, and impartial observers; many of them are the result of a careful and jealous scrutiny of Mezzofanti’s attainments, made by critics of indisputable capacity; most of them will be admitted to be of unquestionable value, as to one point at least—Mezzofanti’s familiarity with the native language of each particular traveller; and all, even the least solid among them, are interesting, as presenting to us, with the freshness of contemporary narrative, the actual impressions received by the writer from his opportunities of personal intercourse with the great linguist.