Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber

by J. A. Wylie

From this silent prophet at the Pope's door, let us skirt along the Janiculum, to the gate of San Pancrazio. The site is a commanding one; and you look down into the basin in which Rome reposes, where many a cupola, and tower, and pillared façade, rises proudly out of the red roofs that cover the Campus Martius. If it is toward sunset, you can see the sheen of the villas which are sprinkled over the Sabine and Volscian hills, and are much struck with the fine amphitheatre which the mountains around the city form. What must have been the magnificence of ancient Rome, with her seven hills, and her glorious Campagna, with such a mountain-wall! But let us mark the old gate. It was here that the struggle betwixt the French and the Romans took place in 1849. The wall is here of brick,—very old, and of great breadth; and if struck with a cannon ball, it would crumble into dust by inches, but not fall in masses: hence the difficulty which the French found of breaching it. The towers of the gate are dismantled, and the top of the wall for some thirty yards is of new brick; but, with these exceptions, no other traces remain of the bloody conflict which restored the Pope to his throne. Of old, when Dagon fell, and the human head rolled in one direction and the fishy tail lay in another, "they took Dagon," we are told, and, fastening together the dissevered parts, "they set him in his place again." Idol worshippers are the same in all ages. Oftener than once has the Dagon of the Seven Hills fallen; the crown has rolled in one direction; the "palms of his hands" have been seen in another; and only the sacerdotal stump has remained; but the kings of Europe have taken Dagon, and, by the help of bayonets, have "set him in his place again;" and, having set up him who could not set up himself, have worshipped him as the prop of their own power. What I had come hither to see especially was the graves of those who had fallen. On the left of the road, outside the gate, I found a grassy plateau, of some half-dozen acres, slightly furrowed, but bearing no such indications as I expected to find of such carnage as had here taken place. A Roman youth was sauntering on the spot; and, making up to him, I asked him to be so good as show me where they had buried the Frenchmen. "Come along," said he, "and I will show you the French." We crossed the plateau in the direction of a vineyard, which was enclosed with a stone-wall. The gate was open, and we entered. Stooping down, the youth laid hold on a whitish-looking nodule, of about the size of one's fist, and, holding it out to me, said, "that, Signor, is part of a Frenchman." I thought at first the lad was befooling me; but on examining the substance, I found that it was animal matter calcined, and had indeed formed part of a human being. The vineyard for acres and acres was strewn with similar masses. I now saw where the French were buried. The siege took place in the heat of summer; and every evening, when the battle was over, the dead were gathered in heaps, and burned, to prevent infection; and there are their remains to this day, manuring the vineyards around the walls. I wonder if the evening breezes, as they blow over the Janiculum, don't waft across the odour to the Vatican.

Let us descend the hill, and re-enter the city. There is a class of buildings which you cannot fail to note, and which at first you take to be prisons. They are large, gloomy-looking houses, of from three to four stories, with massive doors, and windows closed with strong upright iron stanchions, crossed with horizontal bars, forming a network of iron of so close a texture, that scarce a pigeon could squeeze itself through. Ah, there, you say, the brigand or the Mazzinist groans! No; the place is a convent. It is the dwelling, not of crime, but of "heavenly meditation." The beings that live there are so perfectly happy, so glad to have escaped from the evil world outside, and so delighted with their paradise, that not one of them would leave it, though you should open these doors, and tear away these iron bars. So the priests say. Is it not strange, then, to confine with bolt and bar beings who intend anything but escape? and is it not, to say the least, a needless waste of iron, in a country where iron is so very scarce and so very dear? It would be worth while making the trial, if only for a summer's day, of opening these doors, and astonishing Rome with the great amount of happiness within it, of which, meanwhile, it has not the least idea. I have seen the dignitaries entering, but no glimpse could I obtain of the interior; for immediately behind the strong outer door is an inner one, and how many more I know not. Mr Seymour has told us of a nun, while he was in Rome, who found her way out through all these doors and bars; but, instead of fleeing back into her paradise, she rushed straight to the Tiber, and sought death beneath its floods.

But although I never was privileged to see the interior of a Roman convent, I saw on one occasion the inmates of these paradises. During my sojourn in that city, it was announced that the nuns of a certain convent were to sing at Ave Maria, in a church adjoining the Piazza di Spagna; and I went thither to hear them. The choristers I did not see; they sat in a remote gallery, behind a screen. Their voices, which in clearness and brilliancy of tone surpassed the finest instruments, now rose into an overpowering melodious burst, and now died away into the sweetest, softest whispers. Within the low rail, their faces fronting the altar, and their backs turned on the audience, sat a row of spectres. Start not, reader; spectres they were,—fleshless, bloodless spectres. I saw them enter: they came like the sheeted dead; they wore long white dresses; their faces were pale and livid, like those that look out upon you from coffins; their forms were thin and wasted, and cast scarce a shadow as they passed between you and the beams of the sinking sun. Their eyes they lifted not, but kept them steadfastly fixed on the ground, over which they crept noiselessly as shadows creep. They sat mute and moveless, as if they had been statues of cold marble, all the while these brilliant notes were rolling above them. But I observed they were closely watched by the priests. There were several beside the altar; and whichever it was who happened for the moment to be disengaged, he turned round, and stood regarding the nuns with that stern anxious look with which one seeks to control a mastiff or a maniac. Were the priests afraid that, if withdrawn for a moment from the influence of their eye, a wail of woe would burst forth from these poor creatures? The last hallelujah had been pealed forth,—the shades of eve were thickening among the aisles,—when the priests gave the signal to the nuns. They rose, they moved; and, with eyes which were not lifted for a moment from the floor on which they trod, they disappeared by the same private door by which they had entered. I have seen gangs of galley slaves,—I have seen the husbands and sons of Rome led away manacled into banishment,—I have seen men standing beneath the gallows; but never did I see so woe-struck a group as this. Than have gone back with these nuns to their "paradise," as it is cruelly termed, I felt that I would rather have lain, where the lost nun is, in the Tiber.

Before visiting Italy, I had read and studied the lectures of Father Perrone, Professor of Dogmatic Theology in the Collegio Romano, and had had frequent occasion to mention his name in my own humble pages; for I had nowhere found so clear a statement of the views held by the Church of Rome on the important doctrine of Original Sin, as that given in the Father's writings, and few had spoken so plainly as he had done on the wickedness of toleration. Being in Rome, I was naturally desirous of seeing the Father, and hearing him prelect. Accompanied by a young Roman student, whose acquaintance I had the happiness to make, but whose name I do not here mention, I repaired one day to the Collegio Romano,—a fine quadrangular building; and, after visiting its library, in whose "dark unfathomed caves" lies full many a monkish gem, I passed to the class-room of Professor Perrone. It was a lofty hall, benched after the manner of our own class-rooms, and hung round with portraits of the Professor's predecessors in office,—at least I took them for such. A tall pulpit rose on the end wall, with a crucifix beside it. The students were assembling, and mustered to the number of about an hundred. They were raw-boned, seedy-looking lads, of from seventeen to twenty-two. They all wore gowns, the majority being black, but some few red. Had I been a rich man, and disposed to signalize my visit to the Collegio Romano by some appropriate gift, I would have presented each of its students with a bar of soap, with directions for its use. In a few minutes the Professor entered, wearing the little round cap of the Jesuits. With that quiet stealthy step (an unconscious struggle to pass from matter into spirit, and assume invisibility) which is inseparable from the order, Father Perrone walked up to the pulpit stairs, which, after doffing his cap, and muttering a short prayer before the crucifix, he ascended, and took his place. It may interest those who are familiar with his writings, to know that Father Perrone is a man of middle size, rather inclined to obesity, with a calm, pleasant, thoughtful face, which becomes lighted up, as he proceeds, with true Italian vivacity. His lecture for the day was on the Evidences; and of course it was not the heretics, but the infidels, whom he combated throughout. In the number of his students was a young Protestant American, whom I first met in the house of the Rev. Mr Hastings, the American chaplain, where I usually passed my Sabbath evenings. This young man had chalked out for himself the most extraordinary theological course I ever heard of. He had first of all gone through a full curriculum in one of the old orthodox halls of the United States; he had then passed into Germany, where he had taken a course of neology and philosophy; and now he had come to Rome, where he intended to finish off with a course of Romanism. I ventured to engage him in a conversation on what he had learned in Germany; but we had not gone far till both found that we had lost ourselves in a dark mist; and we were glad to lay hold on an ordinary topic, as a clue back to the daylight. The young divine purposed returning to his native land, and spending his days as a Presbyterian pastor.

Will the reader go back with me to the point where we began our excursion through Rome,—the Flaminian Gate? I invite the reader's special attention to a building on the right. It stands a few paces outside the gate. The building possesses no architectural attractions, but it is illustrative of a great principle. The first floor is occupied as a granary; the second floor is occupied as a granary; the third floor,—how is it occupied,—the attic story? Why, it is the English Protestant Church! Here is the toleration which the Pope grants us in Rome. There are from six hundred to a thousand English subjects resident in Rome every winter; but they dare not meet within the walls to open the Bible, or to worship God as his Word enjoins. They must go out without the gate, as if they were evil-doers; they must climb the stairs of this granary, as if they meditated some deed of darkness; and only when they have got into this garret are they at liberty to worship God. The Pope comes, not in person, but in his cardinals and priests, to Britain; and he claims the right of building his mass-houses, and of celebrating his worship, in every town and village of our empire. We permit him to do so; for we will fight this great battle with the weapons of toleration. We disdain to stain our hands or tarnish our cause by any other: these we leave to our opponents. But when we go to Rome, and offer to buy with our money a spot of ground on which to erect a house for the worship of God, we are told that we can have—no, not a foot's-breadth. Why, I say, the gospel had more toleration in Pagan Rome, aye, even when Nero was emperor, than it has in Papal Rome under Pio Nono. When Christianity entered Rome in the person of the Apostle Paul, did the tyrant of the Palatine strike her dumb? By no means. For the space of two years, her still small voice ceased not to be heard at the foot of the Capitol. "And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house [in Rome], and received all that came in unto him; preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him." Let any minister or missionary attempt to do so now, and what would be his fate? and what the fate of any Roman who might dare to visit him? Instant banishment to the one,—instant imprisonment to the other. The Pope has set up the symbol of intolerance and persecution at his gate. He has written over the portals of Rome, as Dante over the gates of hell, "All ye who enter here, abandon"—God.

I do not say that the place is incommodious internally. The stigma lies in the proscription put upon Protestant worship. It is held to be an abomination so foul, that it cannot be tolerated within the walls of Rome. And the same spirit which banishes the worship to a garret, would banish the worshipper to a prison, or condemn him to a stake, if it dared. The same principle that makes Rome lock her earthly gates against the Protestant now, makes her lock her heavenly gates against him eternally.

There are, however, annoyances of a palpable and somewhat ludicrous kind attending this expulsion of the Protestant worship beyond the walls. The granary to which I have referred adjoins the cattle and pig market. In Rome, although it is a mortal sin to eat the smallest piece of flesh on a Friday, it is no sin at all to buy and sell swine's flesh on a Sabbath. Accordingly, the pig-market is held on Sabbath; and it is customary to drive the animals into the back courts of the English meeting-house before carrying them to market. So I was informed, when at Rome, by a member of the English congregation. The uproar created by the animals is at times so great as to disturb the worshippers in the attic above, who have been under the necessity of putting their hands into their pockets, and buying food for the swine, in order to keep them quiet during the hours of divine service. Thus the English at Rome are able to conduct their worship with some degree of decorum only when both cardinals and swine are propitious. Should either be out of humour,—a thing conceivable to happen to the most obese cardinal and the sweetest-tempered pig,—the English have but little chance of quiet. Nor is that the worst of it. I read not long since in the public journals, a letter from a Romish dignitary,—Dr Cahill, if I mistake not,—who, with an immense amount of bravery, stated that there was no Roman Catholic country in the world where full toleration was not enjoyed; and that, as regarded Rome, any Roman might change his religion to-morrow with perfect impunity. He might adopt Protestantism or Quakerism, or any other ism he pleased, provided he could show that he was not acting under the compulsion of a bribe. But how stands the fact? I passed three Sabbaths in Rome; I worshipped each Sabbath in the English Protestant chapel; and what did I see at the door of that chapel? I saw two gendarmes, with a priest beside them to give them instructions. And why were they there? They were there to observe all who went in and out at that chapel; and provided a Roman had dared to climb these stairs, and worship with the English congregation, the gendarmes would have seized him by the collar, and dragged him to the Inquisition. So much for the liberty the poor Romans enjoy to change their religion. The writer of that letter with the same truth might have told the people of England that there is no such city as Rome in all the world.

I was much taken with the ministrations of the Rev. Francis B. Woodward, the resident chaplain, on hearing him for the first time. He looked like one whose heart was in his work, and I thought him evangelical, so far as the absence of all reference to what Luther has termed "the article of a standing or a falling Church" allowed me to form an opinion. But next Sabbath my confidence was sorely shaken. Mr Woodward was proceeding in a rich and sweetly pious discourse on the necessity of seeking and cultivating the gifts of the Spirit, and of cherishing the hope of glory, when, towards the middle of his sermon, the evangelical thread suddenly snapped. "How are we," abruptly asked the preacher, "to become the sons of God?" I answer, by baptism. By baptism we are made children of God and heirs of heaven. But should we fall from that happy state, how are we to recover it? I answer, by penance. And then he instantly fell back again into his former pious strain. I started as if struck, and looked round to see how the audience were taking it. But I could discover no sign that they felt the real significancy of the words they had just heard. It seemed to me that the English chaplain was outside the gate for the purpose of showing men in at it; and were I the Pope, instead of incurring the scandal of banishing him beyond the walls, I would assign him one of the best of the many hundred empty churches in Rome. The Rev. Mr Hastings, the American chaplain, conducted worship in the dining-room of Mr Cass, the American Consul, to a little congregation of some thirty persons. He was a good man, and a sound Protestant, but lacked the peculiar qualities for such a sphere. He has since passed from Rome and the earth, and joined, I doubt not, albeit disowned as a heretic in the city in which he laboured, "the General Assembly and Church of the first-born" on high.

I have already mentioned that the priests boast that the Pope could say mass in a different church every day of the year. Nevertheless there is next to no preaching in Rome. In Italy they convert men, not by preaching sermons, but by giving them wafers to swallow,—not by conveying truth into the mind, but by lodging a little dough in the stomach. Hence many of their churches stand on hill-tops, or in the midst of swamps, where not a house is in sight. During my sojourn of three weeks, I heard but two sermons by Roman preachers. I was sauntering in the Forum one day, when, observing a little stream of paupers—(how could such go to the convents to beg if they did not go to sermon?)—flowing into the church of San Lorenzo, I joined in the procession, and entered along with them. At the door was a tin-box for receiving contributions for erecting a temple in London, where "their poor destitute fellow-countrymen might hear the true gospel." Were these "destitute fellow-countrymen" in Rome, the Pope would find accommodation for them in some one of his dungeons; but with the English Channel between him and them, he builds with paternal care a church for their use. We doubt not the exiles will duly appreciate his kindness. Every twentieth person or so dropped a little coin into the box as he passed in. A knot of some one or two hundreds was gathered round a wooden stage, on which a priest was declaiming with an exuberance of vehement gesture. On the right and left of him stood two hideous figures, holding candles and crucifixes, and enveloped from head to foot in sackcloth. They watched the audience through two holes in their masks; and I thought I could see a cowering in that portion of the crowd towards which the muffled figures chanced for the time to be turned. I felt a chilly terror creeping over me as the masks turned their great goggle eyes upon me; and accordingly withdrew.

The regular weekly sermon in Rome is that preached every Sabbath afternoon in the church of the Jesuits. This church is resplendent beyond all others in the Eternal City, in marbles and precious stones, frescoes and paintings. Here, too, in magnificent tombs, sleep St Ignatius, the founder of the order, and Cardinal Bellarmin, one of the "Church's" mightiest champions. Its ample roof might cover an assembly of I know not how many thousands. About half-way down the vast floor, on the side wall, stood the pulpit; and before it were set some scores of forms for the accommodation of the audience, which might amount to from four hundred to six hundred, chiefly elderly persons. At three o'clock the preacher entered the pulpit, and, having offered a short prayer in silence, he replaced on his head his little round cap, and flung himself into his theme. That theme was one then and still very popular (I mean with the preachers,—for the people take not the slightest interest in these matters) at Rome,—the Immaculate Conception. I can give only the briefest outline of the discourse; and I daresay that is all my readers will care for. In proof of the immunity of Mary from original sin, the preacher quoted all that St Jerome, and St Augustine, and a dozen fathers besides, had said on the point, with the air of a man who deemed these quotations quite conclusive. Had they related to the theory of eclipses, or been snatches from some old pagan poet in praise of Juno, the audience would have been equally well pleased with them. I looked when the father would favour his audience with a few proofs from St Matthew and St Luke; but his time did not permit him to go so far back. He next appealed to the miracles which the Virgin Mary had wrought. I expected much new information here, as my memory did not furnish me with any well-accredited ones; but I was somewhat disappointed when the preacher dismissed this branch of his subject with the remark, that these miracles were so well known, that he need not specify them. Having established his proposition first from tradition, and next from miracles, the preacher wound up by declaring that the Immaculate Conception was a doctrine which all good Catholics believed, and which no one doubted save the children of the devil and the slaves of hell. The sermon seemed as if it had been made to answer exactly the poet's description:—