I suppose it is a form of the disease now diagnosed as Americanitis, the feverish restlessness that would rather “trek” anywhere than stay put for more than a year or two. But is a terrible disqualification for building a State. Since I have seen it at close quarters, I have often thought of the contrast presented by that handful of North Country shepherds and their descendants, in the Falklands,[6] so proud of doing their best with the best they could get, pleased with their drizzly climate (it rains two hundred and fifty days in the year), because it is so English, proud of their thriving little country, sending out their pelts and mutton by the once-a-month steamer, actually growing their pelargoniums and fuchsias in the open air, and so furiously interested in their miniature politics that the Government and the Opposition are ready to knock each other forty ways from Sunday every time they meet! Good luck and long life to you, my incorrigible brothers! The secret of success is certainly yours, and it all comes from the little plant called Love-of-the-soil.
CHAPTER VI POPE PIUS IX
Director of Ospizio di San Michele—A Splendid Record—Archbishop of Spoleto—A Turbulent Populace—Order Restored—Revolution in Europe—Spoleto Saved—The Earthquake in Umbria—New Post at Imola—Secret Societies—A Cardinal—Attack upon the Three Prelates—The Cardinal’s Bravery—How the Saints Forgive—Pope Pius IX—His Charity and Justice—Defenders of the Poor—Anecdotes of the Cardinal’s Generosity.
After his return from Chile, Father Giovanni Maria Mastai was appointed Director of the Ospizio di San Michele, a position which could not be called a great advancement in the eyes of the world, but which carried with it a most weighty burden of responsibility. Some idea of this charge can be grasped when we explain that the so-called “Hospital” embraced six separate large establishments: namely, an orphanage for boys, another for girls, both containing complete schools for general education as well as for the learning of trades and arts; a home for the aged poor, a “protectory” for unruly boys, a reformatory for fallen women—and a prison for political offenders. The endowments of the Ospizio, together with its earnings, rendered an income of fifty thousand dollars a year, then considered an ample sum for providing for the wants of some thousands of persons. It will readily be understood that this left little or nothing over for salaries to those in charge, but, fortunately, in those days these were not needed, as all the employés, except a few servants, were priests and religious, who gave their services for nothing except food and shelter.
In his own financial affairs, Father Mastai was the worst manager possible; he never kept any money longer than was needed to give it away; but where other funds were concerned he made no mistakes, and his administration was as wise and careful as possible. His friends and family seem to have been a little surprised when his labours and trials during the South American mission received no more public recognition than this appointment to a burdensome task, but he himself was delighted. He had looked back to the years spent with “Tata Giovanni’s” boys with homesick regret; the work at San Michele was of the same kind on a much larger scale, more orphans to train, more poor to cherish, more sinners to help and save, and his generous heart was fully satisfied. The Holy Father, Leo XII, watched the new Director closely during the two years he left him in charge. At the end of that short time the improvement in all the different departments of the Ospizio was fully evident, and its self-supporting funds had increased, in spite of the innovation introduced by the new Director, who ordained that a fair share of the inmates’ earnings should be set aside for their own after use and benefit.
Leo XII was now satisfied that he had not been mistaken in his judgment of Father Mastai’s abilities and virtues, so, without any intermediate promotion, on the 21st of May, 1827, he appointed him Archbishop of Spoleto, the Pope’s own native town. Great was the grief of the vast family at San Michele on learning the news, for whether as simple priest, powerful prelate, or Supreme Pontiff, Pius IX was always enthusiastically loved by all who approached him.
Spoleto, as we know it to-day—but how can I describe it? One magic pen has pictured the Umbrian cities with such divine felicity that the rest of us must be for ever mute. Read what Edward Hutton says about Spoleto—“a beautiful city of rose colour set on a high hill.”—“Spoleto, like a tall and sweet maiden,—kneeling at the head of her long valley under the soft sky.” Read all that that pure-souled genius has written about Umbria and Tuscany, and you will know whatever your mind can grasp of that which the poet and the mystic and the artist feel in that immortal region; my business is not with them, but with the “anima latina” of a holy, hard-working prelate sent in troublous times to govern a turbulent populace already inoculated with the fever of revolution, and preserving, in its murderous hatreds, the best traditions of the late Middle Ages.
This was what the new Archbishop saw before him as, with his two brothers, he approached Spoleto towards the end of June, 1827: “A violent party feud raging between two factions, finding its way into families, separating father from son, brother from brother, sister from sister. Even the clergy had allowed themselves to be drawn into the unhappy conflict, and, as a natural consequence, the interests of religion were suffering lamentably.”[7] So the new Archbishop had no light task before him. I fancy, however, that his was a nature which was happiest in strenuous effort. There are people, even in the modern world, who seem out of place unless they are leading a forlorn hope. We had a friend long years ago, the Marquis de Bâcourt, a delightful French diplomatist, with whom, after the vagrant manner of diplomatists, we foregathered in various parts of the world before meeting him again in Chile, which certainly just then was not a bed of roses for foreign representatives. I was bewailing our own luck and commiserating his, when he interrupted me by exclaiming: “Oh, but I am really enjoying myself! I love difficult and disagreeable affairs!”
Of these we know that Monsignor Mastai found many to adjust in his new charge, and that he was signally successful in smoothing them out. Within two years faction had died in the pretty Umbrian city on the hill, enemies were reconciled, order restored, and the clergy aroused to new zeal and regularity under his wise, strict rule. At the end of those two years he held the people’s hearts in his hands, and well it was for them that he did, for thus he was enabled to save the town and its inhabitants from the terrible danger which suddenly threatened to overwhelm Spoleto in 1830. Leo XII had died on the 10th of February of the preceding year, and had been succeeded by Pius VIII, whose beneficent reign was ended all too soon by death on the eve of All Saints’, 1830. The gentle old man had, during his short Pontificate, attacked and handled with vigour and wisdom some of the most important questions of the day, notably in his regulations for mixed marriages and in his stern condemnation of the secret societies; these had, during the last momentous year of his life, produced the harvest of revolution which convulsed Europe more or less from Warsaw to Rome; yet worse was to come, but Pius VIII was spared the trial of witnessing it. That was reserved for his successor, Gregory XVI, sturdy, imperturbable, broad-shouldered, bringing with him the breezes of the Julian Alps and the hard good sense of the Venetian from the mountains and the sea. He needed it all, for, as I have said elsewhere, the storm that had muttered so long broke loose even before his election; the henchmen of anarchy, who had long been secretly busy in the Papal States, started a revolution in Rome itself in February, 1830; this was promptly quelled, but the trouble in the more northerly provinces was very serious and the Pope had to appeal to Austria to subdue it.
Spoleto had by no means escaped the general infection, but the Archbishop had, by constant watchfulness and his great personal influence, succeeded in preventing any open outbreak of the revolutionary spirit which lurked there; what was his horror and that of the citizens when it became known that a body of four thousand insurgents, retreating before the Austrians, were approaching the town with the intention of holding it against their pursuers! The place was in a panic—the inhabitants already saw themselves trampled down and massacred in the bloody conflict that would take place—saw the stern punishment that the Austrians would inflict upon them for harbouring the desperate revolutionaries. It was in this emergency that Giovanni Maria Mastai showed the coolness of a statesman and the courage of a soldier. At the risk of his life he drove at full speed to the Austrian headquarters and insisted on interviewing the Commander. To the surprised General he explained that the armed insurgents who were demanding Spoleto’s hospitality at the point of the bayonet were strangers to her, that she was in no way responsible for them and that she disclaimed all part in their designs. This point being made clear, he undertook to bring the rebels to submission, single-handed, if the General would promise not to let his own men enter Spoleto. The promise was, naturally, most readily given, the irritated commander being only too glad to relinquish an unpleasant job. And then the Archbishop, getting into his carriage again, rushed off to intercept the revolutionaries in their march on the town.