Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber

by J. A. Wylie

The first and more notable instance of persecution on which the Government of Tuscany ventured, after the banishment of Count Guicciardini and his companions, was the imprisonment of Francesco and Rosa Madiai, for reading the Word of God in the Italian language. The sufferings of these confessors turned out for the furtherance of the Gospel. The attention of many of their own countrymen was drawn to the cause of their sufferings; and the bigotry of the Grand Duke, or rather of the Court of Rome, with which the Tuscan Government had entered into a concordat for the suppression of heresy, was proclaimed before all Europe. A Protestant deputation visited Florence to intercede in behalf of these confessors; but their plea found so little favour with the Grand Duke, that he immediately issued a decree, reviving an old law which makes all offences against the religion of the State punishable by death. To provide for carrying the decree into effect, a guillotine was imported from Lucca, and an executioner was hired at a salary of ten pounds a month. As if this were not sufficiently explicit, the Grand Duke told his subjects that he was "determined to root out Protestantism from his State, though he should be handed down to posterity as a monster of cruelty." Neither the spectacle of the guillotine nor the terrible threat of the Grand Duke could arrest the progress of the good work. The Bible was sought after, and read in secret; and the numbers who left the communion of the Romish Church grew and multiplied daily. In the beginning of 1853, the Protestants, or Evangelicals as they prefer to call themselves in Tuscany, were estimated at many thousands. I doubt not that this estimate was correct, if viewed as including all who had separated their interests from the Church of Rome; but I just as little doubt that a majority of these, if brought to the test, rather than suffer would have denied the Gospel. Many of them knew it only as a political badge, not as a new life. But, on the judgment of those who had the best means of knowing, there were at least a thousand in Tuscany who had undergone a change of heart, and were prepared to confess Christ on the scaffold. To hunt out these peaceful ones, and bring them to punishment, is the grand object of the priesthood; and in the confessional they have an instrumentality ready-made for the purpose. Taking advantage of the greater timidity of the female mind, it has become a leading question with the confessor, "Does your husband read the Bible? Has he political papers?" Alas! according to the ancient prophecy, the brother delivers up the brother to death. I heard of some affecting cases of this sort when I was in Florence. Of the fifty persons, or thereabouts, who were then in prison on religious grounds, not a few had been accused by their own relatives, the accusation being extorted by the threat of withholding absolution. At the beginning of the English Reformation, with an infernal refinement of cruelty, children were often compelled to light the faggots which were to consume their parents; and in Tuscany at this hour, the trembling wife is compelled, by the threat of eternal damnation, to disclose the secret which is to consign the husband to a dungeon. The police are never far from the confessor's box, and wait only the signal from it, what house to visit, and whom to drag to prison. As with us in former days, the Bible is secreted in the most unlikely places; it is read at the dead hour of night; and the prayers and praises that follow are offered in whispering accents,—for fear of the priests and the guillotine.

Every subsidiary agency that might further the progress of the truth has been suppressed by the Government. All the liberal papers have been put down. They appeared again and again under new names, but only to encounter, under every form, the veto of the authorities. At last their whole printing establishments were confiscated. The public press having been silenced, the secret one continued to speak to the Tuscans from its hiding-place; and its voice was the more heard that the other was dumb. Besides Bibles, a variety of religious books have issued from it, and have been widely circulated. Among the translated works spread among the Tuscans are D'Aubigné's "History of the Reformation," M'Crie's "Suppression of the Reformation in Italy," "The Mother's Catechism," Watts' "Catechism," "The Pilgrim's Progress," and a variety of religious tracts. The prohibition of a book by the Government is sure to be followed by a universal demand for it; and the Government decree is thus the signal for going to press with a new edition of the forbidden work. Mr Gladstone's letters on Naples were prohibited by Government; and the very means adopted to keep the Tuscans ignorant of what Englishmen thought of the state of Naples, and of the Continent generally, only led to its being better known. Though not a single copy of these letters was to be seen in the shops or on the stalls, they found their way into every one's hands. The same thing happened to Count Guicciardini. The Government prohibited his statement, and all Florence read it. The well-known hatred of the priests to the Bible has been its best recommendation in the eyes of the Tuscans. Thus the Government finds that it cannot move a step without inflicting deadly damage on its own interests. Its interposition is fatal only to the cause it seeks to help. To prohibit a book is to publish it; to bring a man to trial is to give liberty an opportunity of speaking through his advocate; to cast a confessor of the Lord Jesus into prison is but to erect a light-house amidst the Tuscan darkness. The Government and the priesthood find that their efforts are foiled and their might paralyzed by a mysterious power, which they know not how to grapple with. The guillotine has stood unused: not that any scruples of conscience or any feelings of humanity restrain the priests; fain would they bring every convert to the scaffold if they dared; but the odium which they well know would attend such a deed deters them; and they anxiously wait the coming of a time when it may be safe to do what could not be done at present but at the risk of damaging, and perhaps ruining, their cause. It does not follow that the Tuscan priesthood have not the guilt of blood to answer for. If the confessors of the Gospel in that land are not perishing by the guillotine, they are pining in prisons, and sinking into the grave, by reason of the choking stench, the disgusting vermin, and the insufficient food, to which they are exposed.

But the condition of these victims, perishing unknown and unpitied in the fangs of an ecclesiastical tyranny, is not the most distressing spectacle which Tuscany at this hour presents. Theirs is an enviable state, compared with that of the great body of the people. These occupy but a larger prison, and groan in yet stronger fetters; while their captivity is uncheered by any such hope as that which sustains the Tuscan confessors of the truth. Mistrust of their Church is widely spread in the country. There is no religion in Tuscany. There is as little morality. The marriage vow is but little regarded, and the seducer boasts of his triumphs over married chastity, as if they were praiseworthy deeds. Thousands have plunged into atheism. Of those who have not gone this length, the great body are dissatisfied, ill at ease, without confidence in the doctrines of Rome, but ignorant of a more excellent way. Straitly shut up, they grope blindfolded round the walls of their prison-house, wistfully turning their eyes to any ray of light that strikes in through its crevices. How this state of things may end is known only to God;—whether in the gradual spread of Gospel light, and the peaceful fall of that system which has so long enthralled the intellect and soul of the Tuscans; or whether, as a result of the growing exasperation and deepening horrors of these bondsmen, they may give a violent wrench to the pillars of the ecclesiastical and social fabric, and pull it down upon the heads of themselves and their oppressors.

I may avail myself of this opportunity of introducing a few recent facts relative to the analogous work in Genoa; and this I do because these facts are of a character which may enable the reader more clearly to conceive of the present religious condition of Italy, and the state of the movement in that country.

The north of Italy and kingdom of Sardinia, as I have already said, since the Constitution granted in 1848, is open to the promulgation of evangelical truth; that is, it may be taught in almost every conceivable way, provided it is not done offensively or obtrusively. While the religion of the State is Roman Catholic, there is toleration and liberty of conscience to all; indeed, there is no religion at all. The king cares for none of these things, and most of his Ministers are at one with him. The present Ministry is Liberal; and Count Cavour is, to all intents and purposes, Radical. It is said that he declares he will never rest until Sardinia is another England. The Constitution is something very similar to that of England, and only requires to be developed. The present Government, however, is more liberal than the Constitution; and the Constitution gives more liberty than the majority of the people are yet able to receive: hence collision frequently takes place. Old statutes are still unrepealed; and the priest party compels the Government to do things which they are very unwilling to do. For example, one of the Cereghini was recently tried, and condemned to pay a fine of two hundred pauls, and go to prison for four months, for having some little thing to do in publishing a small controversial catechism against the Romish Church, and vending it rather too openly. An appeal was made against the sentence, and it stands unexecuted, and will do. As a matter of law, the executive Government is obliged to take up such cases and deal with them; and the nobility or priesthood—for they are one and the same—are ever on the look-out for such cases. The case of Captain Pakenham, who was expelled from Sardinia, comes under this head. The Constitution is the same now as it was then; only it is further developed in the minds of the people, and the same offence would not now likely meet the same unjust punishment, or create the same stir among the people, as it did then. But Captain Pakenham need not have been expelled from the State if our British Ministers in Sardinia had done their duty; but they are sometimes only too glad to get quit of such men as Captain Pakenham. If they had protested against the sentence, it would never have been executed. Such a thing would never have occurred to an American subject. "British residents or travellers in Italy," writes one to us, "will never have any comfort or satisfaction under the union-jack, until the present race of consuls and plenipotentiaries, sitting in high places, truckling with petty kings and grand dukes, is hanged, every one of them. There is an obliging old consul at Rome who might be exempted."

The following extract from a letter written in March last, and addressed to ourselves, from the Rev. David Kay, the able pastor of the Scotch congregation in Genoa, will be read with deep interest. We know none who knows better than Mr Kay the condition of Sardinia, or is more familiar with all that has been done and is doing there. What he says of the moral condition of Genoa may be taken as a fair sample of the other towns and States of Italy. None of them are superior to Genoa in this respect, and most of them, we believe, are below it. Alas! the picture is a sad one.

"Nothing could be more foolish or detrimental to the evangelical work in Sardinia than for every man and woman who enters the country, to pass through it or spend a few months even, to commence 'doing something,' as they generally express it. They scatter Bibles and tracts broad-cast, without knowing anything of the people they give them to; and nine-tenths of these books are carried forthwith to the priest or the pawnshop, generally the former, and are burned. This does not affect them much, perhaps, because they will soon be off; but it renders the position of those stationed in the country very precarious. The priest likes very much to collect all the Bibles, Testaments, tracts, &c., into a heap, and, before setting the match to them, bring some of his English friends to see them. This is no exaggeration. At least two such cases have come under my notice. Knowledge and prudence are very essential qualities,—some knowledge of the country and its people, and some little common sense to use that knowledge well. If our British travellers and residents would give the Italians a better example of how the Sabbath ought to be kept, and is kept, by the serious in Britain, and let precept for the most part alone,—the real missionary work to be done by people competent,—generally speaking, they would advance the work far more than by the way they often adopt. We talk of liberal Sardinia; but liberal is a relative term, and all who know Sardinia will only apply it relatively. When an injudicious thing is done, or even when a lawful thing is done injudiciously, we soon see where the liberty of Sardinia is. It is as lawful for a man to have a thousand Italian Bibles in his house as to have a thousand copies of 'Rob Roy.' Both packages come regularly through the custom-house, and duty is paid for them; and yet the other day in Nice several houses were searched by the gendarmes, and all Bibles and tracts carried away. This is contrary to the Constitution of the country, and yet it was done. Englishmen will make a cry about it, and demand justice (a thing generally sold to the highest bidder); but it is no use,—only harm will be done by it. Every day things in kind differing in degree are done throughout the State. The long and short of the matter is this; the minds of the people must open, and be allowed time to open gradually, ere the liberal Constitution of Sardinia can be applied to its full extent. And it is the forgetting this, or not knowing it, that usually brings these things about. Something, perhaps a very common thing, and quite lawful, and done every day, is done in a foolish way, and a foolish thing is done by the executive Government to meet it. It is not the present generation,—it has been too long under the yoke,—but the rising generation, that will exhibit the new Constitution. The grand secret is to do as much as possible,—and almost anything may be done,—and say nothing about it. It is truly interesting to watch the gradual opening up of the long shut kingdom, and very exciting to give every day a stronger blow to the wedge that opens it. I remember well, when I came here, nearly two years ago, Italian Bibles could not be got into Genoa, as other goods, by paying the duty on them, although it was perfectly lawful then, as now, to bring them in that way. For a year past we have got all the Bibles the Bible-senders of Britain will send us. Hundreds or thousands of them can be brought through the custom-house without any difficulty. We are anxiously waiting the arrival of six thousand at this moment. And yet a month has not passed since four thousand religious books,—less mischievous by far than the Bible,—were sent from our port to Marseilles. They could not be landed in any part of his Majesty's dominions. From these facts you will see that we live in a kingdom of practical contradictions.

"The priests, meanwhile, are by no means idle. They are instructing their people in the dogmas of their Church; and for this they have classes in the evening,—the zealous at least, among them have. Apart from their petty persecution in preventing us getting a place of worship (the affair of the 'Madre di Dio' you know all about, as also their general story of every convert being paid), they send missionaries to England once or twice a-year, (there is a priest whom I know just now returned), who bring, generally prostitutes, but women of a better order if they can find them, put them into a convent, to train, and, when trained, send them out to strengthen the Catholics here in their faith, and, if possible, bring back to the fold those who have gone to Geymonat; and highly accomplished trustworthy dames they send home to England to bring out others, or remain there and proselytise; or they send them here and there among the English on the Continent, sometimes to profess one thing and sometimes another. A few weeks ago one tried her skill upon us residing in Genoa, and partially succeeded. Her tale was, that she was the daughter of an English clergyman, who came abroad with her aunt, travelling in great style of course, and was put into a convent, and kept there against her will; and now she had contrived to make her escape, and perfectly trembled when she saw a priest, or even heard one named; and, although of high family, was ready to teach or do anything in an English family, to be out of reach of the priests. The things she told were most harrowing, and some of them very true-like. One English gentleman here thought of taking her into his family as governess, until he should get her father to come for her. I was asked to visit her at his house, and hear her woeful history. I went; but the line 'Timeo Danaos,' &c., was ever forcing itself upon me as I walked musingly along to the house, which was a little distance out of town. While hearing her long unconnected string of falsehoods, the thing that astonished me was, why the Roman Catholic priests should have chosen such an ugly woman to do such a piece of work; and not only had she the most forbidding appearance of any woman I ever saw, but she was the most illiterate; not a single sentence came correctly from her lips, and, in pronunciation, the letter 'h' ever was prefixed to the 'aunt' and the 'Oxford,'—the very quintescence of Cockneyism. It was clear to my mind that she had 'done' the priests, and the sequel proves my suspicions to be correct. That day before she left, she discovered that she was suspected, and very prudently threw off her mask very soon after. Her correct history we are only getting bit by bit; but all we have learned convinces us that she has deceived the Italian priest, who knows very little of English, by persuading him that she is the daughter of an English clergyman, and very highly connected in England. You have enough of the story to see the kind of plot regularly carried on. What they expected to gain by passing her off upon us, we cannot tell, unless that they wished to know earlier and more fully our movements. There is an English pervert here just now,—a weak fool, but an educated one,—on a mission to Geymonat's people, to assure them that they have committed a great sin. Having proved both systems of religion, he can judge, and there is no comfort whatever in the Protestant. He has taken up his abode here, and is prosecuting his mission vigorously.