LEO XIII.
When Leo XIII. mounted the Pontifical throne, the Papacy had had three quarters of a century of disastrous experience of the reactionary policy. The Restoration of 1815 had seemed to inaugurate for Rome a new period of prosperity. The touching experiences of Pius VII. and the widely recognized need of combating by religious influence the new spirit of revolt disposed the monarchs of Europe, and a large part of their subjects, to regard the successor of Peter with respect. He had been their ally in resisting Napoleon: he was their ally in restoring feudalism. England moderated its rude tradition of "the Scarlet Woman." The Tsar of the Russias felt that Romanism was a large element in the spiritual renaissance he contemplated. Louis XVIII. remembered how altar and throne had fallen together. Ferdinand of Spain drowned the revolt in blood. Austria reconsidered its Febronianism. Italy seemed incapable of rebellion.
But the revolutionary wave had retired only to come back with greater effect, and from 1830 to 1850 the face of Europe was transformed. The Popes almost alone defied the spirit to which monarchs bowed, and they stood almost alone amid their ruins. England returned to its disdain: Russia and Switzerland angrily broke off relations with the Vatican: Germany was engaged in what the Vatican regarded as a formidable effort to crush Catholicism in the new Empire. Austria was sullen and weakened. France was rapidly passing into its third and final revolt against Catholicism. Spain was forced into an alliance with the growing Liberals against the Carlists. Italy was overwhelmingly opposed to the Papacy on what the Papacy declared to be a sacred and vital issue, and was honeycombed with Rationalism. Belgium was almost dominated by a Liberal middle class. The South American republics were falling away in succession. The two most profoundly Catholic peoples, Ireland and Poland, were ruined, and their children were scattered and seduced. Thus would any penetrating cardinal have interpreted the situation of the Church in 1878; yet, if his penetration were great enough, he would see that there was a tendency among this Liberal middle class, which now dominated Europe, to seek once more an alliance with religion against the deeper social heresies which were appearing. Would the new Pope prove subtle enough to grasp that opportunity and save the Church? His "infallibility" would avail little: he would be unwise to emphasize it. He must be a diplomatist and a rhetorician.
The new Pope, Leo XIII., was nearly sixty-eight years old, and had had a better education in the history of the nineteenth century than most of the Italian cardinals had. Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci was born on March 2, 1810, at Carpineto. His first lesson, in the country mansion, would be to hear his father. Colonel Pecci, and his very pious mother, a Tertiary of the Franciscan Order, talk of the Napoleonic nightmare that had just passed away. From the age of eight to fourteen he was under the care of the Jesuits at Viterbo, and, as it was represented to him that the younger sons in so large a family had to look to the Church for their income, after some hesitation, he allowed them to tonsure him, at the age of eleven.[358] In 1824 his mother died, and he went to study, still under the Jesuits, at the Collegio Romano at Rome. He had conspicuous ability and high character, and besides improving his Latin—he already wrote Latin poems—he studied philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy. He attracted attention, as clever boys attract the attention of the clergy, and was directed toward the clerical career. He must enter the "Academy for Noble Ecclesiastics," said one prelate; and, with the aid of his brothers, he drew up a genealogical tree to prove that his father, the easy-going colonel of Carpineto, was descended from the mediæval Pecci of Siena. The Academy did not pronounce his proof valid—the connexion is probable enough—but, on his merits, and in view of his important patrons, admitted him among the nobles of Anagni (1831).
Joachim—he had called himself Vincenzo until 1832—took a degree in theology, and told his brothers that he was going to illumine their ancient family. He still loved to take a flintlock musket over the hills during his holidays, but he indulged in no dissipations and became pale and thin over the books which were to help his ambition. His father died in 1836, and it is in his naïve letters to his brothers that we discover the human elements ignored by his eloquent biographers.[359] He begins to follow politics, in the most ardent Papal spirit. Cardinal Pacca, the intransigeant, recommended the pale, slim young cleric to Gregory XVI., and in 1837 he was appointed domestic prelate. Cardinal Sala also befriended the young Monsignore, and he went from one small office to another. Sala pointed out that for further advancement he must become a priest, and he became a priest (December 31, 1837); but his letters make it clear that he entered the priesthood in a mood of such exalted piety that Sala feared he was about to quit the world and become a Jesuit.
About a month after his ordination (February 2, 1838) he was appointed Apostolic Delegate (Civil Governor) of Benevento, where the brigandage which disgraced the Papal States was particularly rabid. In three years, with the aid of a skilful chief of police, he almost suppressed brigandage and smuggling, and did much for the province. His progress was not so heroically triumphant as the biographers represent. In his letters to his brothers he complains that his predecessor has robbed the treasury and they must help him: that his ninety-seven ducats a month do not enable him to have the fine horses and carriage he needs: and, later (in 1839), that the clerics at Rome are plotting to cheat him of the higher promotion which he deserves. In 1841 the Pope transferred him to Perugia, and he did good work in reforming education, founding a bank for small traders, and so on.
In January, 1843, his real education began. He was appointed Nuncio at Brussels and was made titular Archbishop of Damietta. Able as he was, the promotion to so important an office was premature. Of French (or any languages but Latin and Italian) he knew not a syllable until he set out, and with the modern thought which was then current in Brussels he was acquainted only by means of the version of it given by Pius IX. in the Syllabus, of which he fully approved. His handsome presence and amiable ways carried him far. There is an almost boyish expression on his face at this period: on the long, thin, smiling face and bright eyes and soft sensuous mouth. King Leopold, a Protestant, liked him, and allowed the young archbishop to attract him to religious functions and persuade him of the importance of religion in appeasing social ambitions. Pecci, in turn, could not contemplate the gas-lit streets, the railways, the postal system, etc., of Belgium, without realizing that the Papal States would have to admit something of this modern thought. But he was for a safe modernism, consistent with the Quanta Cura and the Syllabus. He was suave to all: even to the rebellious Gioberti, who was then giving Italian lessons in Brussels. To this period of his career belongs the good story of a naughty Liberal marquis, who ventured to offer him a pinch of snuff from a box which was adorned with a nude Venus, and the Archbishop is said to have taken it and asked: "Madame la marquise?" Secretly, however, he urged the Catholics to organize a struggle against the Liberals. The Liberals wanted a compromise on the school-question, and, when the Nuncio assisted in defeating it, the Premier Deschamps wrote contemptuously to Rome that they would like a Nuncio who was a "statesman." As, about the same time, the bishopric of Perugia fell vacant and the Perugians asked for their former Delegate, Gregory recalled Pecci. His disappointment—which he plainly expresses in his letters—was softened only by the Pope's assurance that the transfer would be regarded as "equal to promotion to a nunciature of the first class"; in other words, he remained on the path to the cardinalate, as he desired.[360]
From Brussels he brought a warm testimonial written by King Leopold, and he spent a month in London (where he had an interview with the Queen) and some weeks in Paris. He reached Rome in May (1846), to find Gregory dying, and he witnessed the election of Pius IX., and, at Perugia, applauded the early "liberalism" of the Pope. Perugia had a large share of the advanced thinkers who now overran Italy, and the Bishop would assuredly become more closely acquainted with their ideas. From his later encyclicals, however, one must suppose that he never made a profound study of their claims, either on the intellectual or the social side. Of philosophy he had only the mediæval version given him in the Collegio Romano and the Sapienza, and of economics or sociology he knew nothing. Such science as he knew—the elements of chemistry and astronomy—was easily reconcilable with religion, and this gave him an apparently liberal attitude toward science. On the other hand, he had genuine sympathies and he felt that the new aspirations of the working class were not to be met with a sheer rebuff.[361] The ideas of Gioberti and Ventura appealed to him. Even when Gioberti had fallen out of favour at the Quirinal, Archbishop Pecci, when he passed through Perugia in 1848, gave him hospitality in his palace. Henri des Houx affirms that he heard on good authority that for this Pius IX. suspended the Archbishop from pontifical duties for several weeks. Later, he incurred suspicion by permitting a memorial service at the death of Cavour. It is admitted by the leading Catholic biographers that he was in bad odour at the Quirinal. The promised cardinal's hat was withheld for eight years[362] and his great ability was wasted on a provincial bishopric. The slight is ascribed to the jealousy of Cardinal Antonelli, and his advance after the Secretary's death confirms the suspicion.
It is, however, plain that Pecci was a most excellent Bishop, and that he was no more "Liberal" than Pius IX. in his first year. He strictly organized the work and education of the clergy, restored the seminary and built a College of St. Thomas, founded many schools, churches, and hospitals, brought Brothers of Mercy and nuns from Belgium, and opened a branch of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. He left a fine record of religious-social work, and the orthodox poor loved him. Yet we must set aside the exaggerations of biographers. Pecci cherished the purely Papal ideal and was out of touch with the majority of his people. In 1859, when a group of rebels set up a "Provisional Government" at Perugia, he nervously shut himself in his palace for two days and, without a protest, allowed the ferocious Swiss Guard sent by Antonelli to wear themselves out in an orgy of slaughter and pillage. A few months later Sardinia expelled the Papal troops, and, when a plebiscite was taken, 97,000 voted for incorporation in the kingdom of Sardinia, and only 386 voted against. The Archbishop protested emphatically and consistently against the seizure of the Pope's temporal power, and, when the hated laws of Sardinia were successively applied to Perugia (on civil marriage, the suppression of the religious orders, military service for clerics, etc.), he continued to protest in the warmest language. In 1862 he suspended three priests who adopted the Italian cause, and was cited before the civil tribunal; but the case was allowed to lapse. We know that he was carefully watched from the Quirinal, and that he had an informant of his own at the Curia,[363] but his pronouncements and letters make it abundantly clear that he never swerved from the strict Papal conception of contemporary thought and politics.
Antonelli died in December, 1876, and (as is ignored by most of his biographers) Pecci very shortly went to live at Rome—long before he was appointed Chamberlain. He had an able coadjutor in the bishopric, and he pleaded his age and increasing weakness. He lived in the modest Falconieri Palace, and trusted to get a suburbicarian bishopric. To his annoyance, two which fell vacant in the next few weeks were given by Pius to others, but at length, in August, the Pope appointed him Camerlengo (Chamberlain). In that capacity he had, the following February, to tap the dead Pope on the forehead with a hammer and to arrange the Conclave. He was not widely known at Rome, and few foresaw his elevation to the throne. It is, in fact, probable that Pius IX. had made him Camerlengo, not in order to exclude him from the Papacy, but because he was not likely to be required for it. Since Alexander VI. no Chamberlain had been elected Pope. There were, however, shrewd observers who predicted his rise, and little surprise was expressed when, after the third scrutiny, on February 20th, he secured forty-four out of the sixty-one votes. We may set aside romantic speculations about the Conclave. A few cardinals perceived that the Church needed in its ruler just such a combination of clear intelligence, broad knowledge, and diplomatic temper as Cardinal Pecci possessed, and he was sufficiently sound on Papal politics to disarm the more conservative. It is not impossible that waverers reflected as they gazed on the worn white frame of the cardinal, that, whatever policy he adopted, Leo XIII. would not long rule the Church.