"I am not obliged to believe Thomas, or Augustine," I added, "but I am obliged to believe Paul."
The good old man was silent at these observations, and seemed to receive them with approbation. He often read the Bible, but never allowed himself any other than the Vulgate, with the notes. He disliked the Italian version; but one day finding me reading the New Testament, translated by Martini: he took it from me, smiling, and said, "Let us make an exchange;" at the same time giving me a Latin version of the Vulgate. As he read the Bible himself, so he recommended others to read it, but always with the notes of the Roman Theologians, drawn from the Holy Fathers.
This visitation kept me employed from the summer of 1834, till February in the next year. My old friend accompanied me as long as the fine weather continued; when it began to break up, he returned to winter quarters, to take care of his health.
I had now all the burden on my own shoulders; I had to provide for the wants of several monasteries, and to hear the complaints of the monks. I had to connect spiritual with worldly interests; external strictness with interior comfort; to reconcile contending minds; to settle differences, and harmonize discord; to rouse the slothful; to excite emulation in sacred things; to inculcate a love of study, and an observance of the rules; and to correct the vicious with mildness.
Every one will remember the name of Domenico Abbo, who was condemned ten years after the period I am speaking of, for enormous crimes, to be beheaded in the Castle of St. Angelo, at Rome.[38] He was at this time a Dominican friar, Superior and Reader at the little monastery of Nepi, near Rome. I had heard several reports against him, and I went to verify the matter. I found him culpable in many things, and I advised him to renounce his present offices, and to retire to another monastery; repent of his evil ways, and lead a better life; he denied the whole, and turned against me, uttering the bitterest threats. I then suspended him from his ministry, removed him from office, and ordered him to leave in a few days. He appealed to the bishop, the provincial, the general, and got up a certificate from certain persons in the neighbourhood, to prove his good conduct: he even sent some of his friends to intercede with me for pardon, but I could not relax my decree towards one so incorrigibly bad, and I insisted upon his leaving the monastery. He accordingly went to Rome, quitted the Dominican Order, put on the dress of a priest, and was on the point of being made a prelate, through the protection of Cardinal Lambruschini, and the favour of Pope Gregory, then ignorant of the extent of his wickedness; but the Divine justice had prepared to make an example of him. He was guilty of the most enormous and detestable crimes. The facts became public—the people took part against him, and the government was obliged to act promptly in order to calm the popular tumult. One tribunal condemned him to death; another confirmed the sentence; Cardinal Lambruschini was afraid for his own safety; the Pope was obliged to consent, and the wretched man's head rolled on the scaffold. He on that occasion had moved a strong party against me, saying I had persecuted him because he was not of my way of thinking. He excited hatred in many towards me, but I thought no more of him, and the affair, melancholy enough in itself, passed away.
This visitation made me acquainted with many things of which I was before ignorant, but which certainly were anything but virtues, either in a Christian, or a citizen; and on my return to Rome, I made known to several persons the effect my visit to the monasteries had produced upon my mind.
Meanwhile, I had been sent for by the Cardinal Archbishop of Capua, as preacher of the Lent Sermons in his cathedral. The Father General allowed me to accept the invitation, on condition that I should return immediately, and enter upon my new office. Accordingly I went to Naples, in February 1835; certainly not with the intention of returning to Rome, but, on the contrary, with that of speedily emancipating myself from monkish thraldom.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] L'Esame ad gradus. The Dominicans so call the examination for the degree of Doctor of Theology.
[36] Alluding to the ceremony in the creation of a cardinal, in which the pope first shuts the cardinal's mouth and then opens it.