Italian Yesterdays, vol. 2

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Then the Archbishop looked around at him and said, very quietly, “I speak with the living, not with the dead.”

The frightened domestic rushed into the anteroom where the petitioner had been left, and beheld a tumbled heap on the floor. Calling his fellow-servants to help him, he raised it up. The heavy veil had slipped from the face. The “lady” was a man, with a great sharp knife concealed in his feminine garments. He was stone dead.

Monsignor Mastai was made a Cardinal (with the titular of the Church of St. Peter[8] and Marcellinus) on the 14th of December, 1840, to the great happiness of his mother, a widow since 1833. During her lifetime he made a point of going once or more every year to visit her at Sinigaglia in the old house where his childhood had been passed. He frequently was obliged to come to Rome on business, and so long as he was Archbishop of Spoleto, he lodged at the orphanage of Tata Giovanni on these occasions. That was no longer possible after he had been promoted to the more important See of Imola, as he was then expected to travel with a larger suite, for whom the Orphanage did not provide fitting quarters. He resented the expense of these more ostentatious journeys, complaining that the money they cost would have been better spent among his poor at Imola, but he had no choice in the matter and had to submit to custom and tradition.

A very unpleasant adventure marked the third year of his cardinalate. In the heat of the summer he and two of his colleagues in the Sacred College arranged to take a few weeks of rest in a small and lonely villa in a remote part of the country. They knew, of course, that the revolutionary agents were abroad and at work, but it had not occurred to any of the trio that their own illustrious persons might be designated as worthy objects of attack. But a certain Riotti, a Piedmontese, deep-dyed in conspiracy, conceived the brilliant idea of kidnapping the three prelates and holding them as hostages, to be ransomed at the price of his own immunity should his treasonable designs be discovered. So, in the dead of night this hero, with six of his fellow-conspirators, broke into the villa, and the unfortunate prelates were roused from their sleep to find themselves confronted with a band of desperate men armed to the teeth. The two other Cardinals were not fighters, but Giovanni Maria Mastai was. What weapons he used I know not—he had none at hand except his high courage and biting tongue, but the outcome was that the ruffians fled from his presence and were heard of no more. His companions said that it was entirely owing to his bravery that the whole party was saved.

One spring day at Imola, while the Carnival was roaring through the streets, the Archbishop was down on his knees in the Church praying for his people that they might not sin in their mirth. Alas! even his fervent prayers could not altogether avert that calamity! A sudden tumult of cries and footsteps came from the sacristy and he rushed thither to almost fall over a young man, who lay gasping in his blood on the pavement. At the same moment his pursuers broke in after him, three men with knives in their hands, furiously intent on finishing their victim. The Cardinal instantly placed himself before him and, holding up the gold cross which he wore on his breast, forbade them to come a step nearer. In a torrent of burning eloquence he reproached them with their atrocious cruelty and sacrilege of which they had been guilty, and ordered them to quit the Church. They stood for a moment cowed and broken, then they fled, and he turned to the poor boy on the ground. Very tenderly he knelt down beside him, and soothed and comforted him, pillowing his bleeding neck on his arm, while the attendants who had arrived on the scene ran for a physician. The latter came promptly, but said that the wound was mortal—there was nothing to be done. Then, still kneeling on the ground and holding the poor dying boy in his arms, the Cardinal helped him to make his confession, called one of the priests of the Church to administer the last Sacraments, and knelt there till the young soul passed away, comforted and at peace.

Where injuries or insults were offered to himself, Cardinal Mastai forgave as only the Saints can forgive. The chief magistrate of Imola, a hard and cruel man, had conceived the most bitter hatred of him for his gentle methods and broad, progressive views, and expressed his hostility with much violence. The Mayor’s wife, a good devout woman, was much distressed at his attitude, and sought by every means in her power to heal the one-sided feud. A child was born to her, and she secretly begged the Cardinal to volunteer to be its godfather—she was sure her husband’s heart would be softened at such an evidence of condescension and good-will! Nothing loath, the good Cardinal approached the Mayor, personally, and with much gentleness and humility asked if he would permit him to stand sponsor for the baby. Whereupon the Mayor flew into a passion and exclaimed: “You! You presume to suggest such a thing! You, who are a friend of malcontents and rebels! No, indeed! You are too liberal for me!” Then he turned his back on his Archbishop and left him—a suppliant refused!

The Archbishop accepted both the insult and the calumny without a word of protest. A month later he changed his name and assumed that of Pius IX. Learning that his old enemy was in Rome with his family at the time, he sent him word that, although he had refused to allow the Archbishop of Imola to stand godfather to his child, he might not feel the same objection to the Pope, who, if the infant were not yet baptised, would be glad to be its sponsor. En passant one is struck with wonder that, amid all the preoccupation and inevitable excitement of that great change in his life, Pius IX should have found time to think of the man at all. Naturally, he had conquered, and his old enemy could scarcely express his gratitude at receiving such an honour. Even then the Pope remembered him again, and very soon afterwards seized an opportunity of conferring on him a great material benefit. That is how the Saints forgive!

Naturally he had conquered, and the favour was received with almost unbelieving joy.

Oh, they were a good family, those Mastai-Ferrettis. After the accession of Pius IX, his brother, Cardinal Ferretti, a most wise and saintly man, acted as his Prime Minister for a time, before the revolution. His memory was greatly venerated in Rieti, of which place he was Cardinal Bishop. A terrible thing happened while he was there. One of the Churches was broken into at night, the Tabernacle violated, and the pyx containing the Blessed Sacrament stolen. On learning of this frightful sacrilege the next morning, the Cardinal called all his clergy together, and he and they, with bare feet and ropes round their necks, went in procession to the public square. The entire population gathered round them, and then the Cardinal, standing bareheaded and barefooted under the noonday sun, preached a sermon, taking for his text the cry of Mary Magdalene on Easter morning: “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.”

When the sermon ended the people were kneeling on the stones, sobbing like children. That night the door of the Church was left open, and the pyx was restored; its sacred contents were intact.