NOTE 2.
A better illustration of the manner in which the Church of Rome applies her patronage of the fine arts to the inculcation of her doctrines and the increase of her power, can hardly be found than among the frescoes of the Campo Santo, Pisa. Here we have represented the most ghastly cartoons of death, judgment, purgatory, and hell; we behold angels and devils fighting for the souls of the departed, snakes devouring, fiends scorching, red-hot hooks tearing their flesh. Those on earth can, so say the priests, rescue their unfortunate relatives from this melancholy position by giving donations to their spiritual fathers, who will then pray for their escape. We read in the New Testament that the rich enter heaven with difficulty, but it is they, according to the Church of Rome, who enter easily, whilst the poor are virtually excluded.
NOTE 3.
In foreign discussions on the papal question it is always assumed as an undisputed fact that the maintenance of the papal court at Rome is, in a material point of view, an immense advantage to the city, whatever it may be in a moral one. Now my own observations have led me to doubt the correctness of this assumption. If the Pope were removed from Rome, or if a lay government were established—the two hypotheses are practically identical—the number of the clergy would undoubtedly be much diminished, a large number of the convents and clerical endowments would be suppressed, and the present generation of priests would be heavy sufferers. This result is inevitable. Under no free government would or could a city of 170,000 inhabitants support 10,000 unproductive persons out of the common funds—for this is substantially the case in Rome at the present day. Every sixteen lay citizens—men, women, and children—support out of their labor a priest between them. The papal question with the Roman priesthood is thus a question of daily bread, and it is surely no want of charity to suppose that the material aspect influences their minds quite as much as the spiritual. It is, however, a Protestant delusion that the priests of Rome live upon the fat of the land. What fat there is is certainly theirs. It is one of the mysteries of Rome how the hundreds of priests who swarm about the streets manage to live. The clue to the mystery is to be found inside the churches. In every church—and there arty 866 of them—some score or two of masses are said daily at the different altars. The pay for performing a mass varies from sixpence to five shillings. The good masses—those paid for by private persons for the souls of their relatives—are naturally reserved for the priests connected with a particular church; while the poor ones are given to any priest who happens to apply for them. The nobility, as a body, are sure to be the supporters of an established order of things; their interests, too, are very much mixed up with those of the papacy. There is not a single noble Roman family that has not one or more of its members among the higher ranks of the priesthood. And in a considerable degree their distinctions, such as they are, and their temporal prospects, are bound up with the popedom. Moreover, in this rank of the social scale the private and personal influence of the priests through the women of the family is very powerful. The more active, however, and ambitious amongst the aristocracy feel deeply the exclusion from public life, the absence from any opening for ambition, and the gradual impoverishment of their property, which are the necessary evils of an absolute ecclesiastical government.—Dicey's "Rome in 1860."
NOTE 4.
Many of our readers may have only an indistinct idea of the causes which led to the siege of Rome in 1849; and to understand it we must turn for a moment to the history of France. The revolution of 1848, which dethroned Louis Philippe and the house of Orleans, and established a republican government in France, was the signal for a general revolutionary movement throughout Europe. The Fifth Article of the new French Constitution stated, "The French Republic respects foreign nationalities. She intends to cause her own to be respected. She will never undertake any sin for the purpose of conquest, and will never employ her arms against the liberty of any people." Prince Louis Napoleon was elected a member of the Chambers. He had fought for the Italian liberty in the year 1831, when the Bolognese revolution broke out. Louis Napoleon had taken an active part in the campaign, and, aided by General Sercognani, defeated the Papal forces in several places. His success was of short duration. He was deprived of his command, and banished from Italy, and only escaped the Austrian soldiers by assuming the disguise of a servant.* When the prince landed in France from England, where he had resided several years, he caused a proclamation to be posted on the walls of Boulogne, from which we extract the following:—
"I have come to respond to the appeal which you have made to my patriotism. The mission which you impose on me is a glorious one, and I shall know how to fulfill it. Full of gratitude for the affection you manifest towards me, I bring you my whole life, my whole soul.
"Brothers and citizens, it is not a pretender whom you receive into your midst. I have not meditated in exile to no purpose. A pretender is a calamity. I shall never be ungrateful, never a malefactor. It is as a sincere and ardent Democratic Reformer that I come before you. I call to witness the mighty shade of the man of the age, as I solemnly make these promises:-
"I will be, as I always have been, the child of France.
"In every Frenchman I shall always see a brother.