We are near the end. A fortnight after Sedan the Piedmontese army, 60,000 strong, appeared before the walls of Rome to seize the last of the temporal possessions of the Holy See. Defence was impossible. The pontiff instructed his little army to resist only until a breach had been made in the walls. Then he went to pray in the venerable Lateran basilica, the mother-church of Christendom. He visited the neighboring chapel of the Scala Santa, and made on his knees the painful ascent of the twenty-eight marble steps from the judgment-hall of Pilate which our Saviour’s blessed feet had pressed. In the little chapel at the top he implored the pity and protection of Almighty God for the afflicted church. Then, followed by the acclamations of a crowd of affectionate subjects, and blessing them as he went, he entered the Vatican, and Rome has never seen him since.
The troops of Victor Emanuel made themselves masters of Rome the next day, September 20, 1870. The king followed them in time and established his court in the Quirinal. And since then, in Rome as in the rest of Italy, the pagan revolution has gone steadily forward to the suppression of Christian education, of monastic and charitable orders, and, as far as possible, of all divine worship. When Garibaldi rode on horseback into the church of Monte Rotondo and ordered his prisoners to cover their heads, which they had bared out of respect to the sacred place, he only gave emphasis to the sentiment which pervades the whole movement. The convents are empty; the churches are desolate; libraries are scattered; great seminaries of theology are broken up; Christian education has been driven from the school-room; there are hundreds of priests who go hungry and in rags; there are nuns in Rome whose whole income is three cents a day; the bishops have been robbed of everything and live on the charity of the Pope; pious processions are prohibited; members of religious orders who survive the suppression of their houses are forbidden to receive novices; the father-general of the Jesuits is an exile from Rome, and his nearest representative lives as a private lay person in hired lodgings. Today a bill is pending in the Italian parliament, and has already passed one branch of it, to punish bishops, priests, religious writers, and journalists for what is styled “disturbing the public conscience” and the “peace of families.” The Italian government has pretended to guarantee the freedom and independence of the Sovereign Pontiff in the exercise of all his spiritual functions, but now it proposes to prevent the publication of his encyclicals and allocutions; to condemn him not only to perpetual imprisonment, but to perpetual silence; to prosecute the bishops if they transmit his instructions to the faithful, and the priests if they preach against any heresy sanctioned by the state. To censure, by speech or writing, any law or institution approved by the civil authority is to be treated as a felony calculated to “disturb consciences.” Our divine Lord passed the whole period of his ministry on earth in disturbing consciences; the history of Christianity, the labors of missionaries and reformers, are nothing else than a record of the disturbance of consciences. But the pagan revolution has no toleration for Christianity. Close the confessionals, tear down the pulpits, burn the Bibles, break the tables of the law; the sleeping conscience of Italy must not be disturbed.
Thus the conspiracy of the kings has moved on towards the subjugation of the church. The secret societies are only using the kingdom of Italy and the despotic empire of Germany for the accomplishment of their anti-religious purpose, and when that is done the kings, in their turn, will be the victims of the deep-laid and long-cherished plot for the abolition of “subordination” and worship. Let nobody imagine that they are inactive or that they are satisfied with national unity. Mazzini never pretended that their work was done when a king was set up in the Pope’s palace. He died conspiring against Victor Emanuel and urging Italy to press on to “the goal of the revolution.” Nor did his projects die with him. The anniversary of his death was celebrated last March by democratic demonstrations all over Italy which the government was helpless to suppress. “A funeral march, a national hymn, and a few short, earnest words from some well-known and esteemed local republicans and capi-popolo,” says an English liberal journal, “declaring the commemorative ceremony to be not merely a token of remembrance, but 'a promise,’ was all that took place; but the fact that these things did take place on the same day throughout the whole of Italy is one of great significance. In many instances the authorities did their best previously, by warnings and even by threats, to prevent these demonstrations, but we have heard of no case in which they ventured upon any attempt to put them down by force.”[[48]] The flags which the associations carried were “free from the stain,” to use the popular phrase—that is to say, they did not show the arms of Savoy; and the letters read and addresses delivered spoke openly of a “time for action” which was yet to come. And while the clubs were thus parading and declaiming the following circular was distributed among the rank and file of the Italian army:
“Free citizens! Brother Carbonari! Every sect, every family, every individual is free to investigate, as best he may, the road which leads to heaven; but it belongs to the Carboneria to indicate and open up the way to the kingdom of liberty, to the triumph of justice, to social amelioration upon earth. The Carboneria, in its principles, in its development, and in the means which it proposes to employ for its purpose—i.e., for the amelioration, economic and moral, of mankind, for the diffusion of liberty, and for the perfect equalization of society—is the one association which can boast of the right of nature and the most perfect justice. All other associations, because based on privilege and ambition, either miss their aim or become useless. Persuaded of this, the apostles of our principle have devoted themselves to propagating and defending it with ardor, defying dangers, condemnations, and calumnies of the most deadly kind. Many were the acquisitions which our association made in a short time in every branch of social science, in the arts, and in commerce, and now all our aspirations are turned towards you who compose the army—the material force of nations. Soldiers! remember that you are sons of the people, free citizens, and at the same time the obstacle to the common weal and the hope of all. Do you wish to serve tyranny, privilege—in a word, the oppressors? Remember that you are sons of the people; that force alone dragged you from the bosom of your desolated families; that, slaves of a stern discipline, you are forced to shoot down the oppressed, to protect the oppressors; and do not forget that to-morrow, wounded and crippled, you will return to the ranks of the people whom you charged with the bayonet, and that in your turn you will then be charged and oppressed. Remember that before being slaves you were free, and that before serving the despot you were citizens. The Carboneria expects you among its ranks; come and range yourselves by the side of thousands of other brave ones, officers and graduates, who do not disdain to stake everything to preserve themselves true sons of the people, generous citizens of our common country.”
II.
We have endeavored to follow thus far the progress of that general revolt of the world against the divine authority which has marked the pontificate of Pius IX. and embraces the Holy Father’s heroic life of constancy and suffering. But simultaneously there has gone on a contrary movement—a clearer development and consolidation of the authority of God’s church over the minds of the faithful; and herein we trace his glorious life of triumphant action. For his attitude towards the revolution has not been one of mere passive resistance. He has fought a stout fight for the imperilled truth. It is a time of corruption and unbelief, when the world is lifted up with satanic pride to defy Heaven, and society is sacrificing all the guarantees of order, and even the elect are sorely tempted. History will record that the great mission of Pope Pius IX. was to expose the fallacies and illusions of these evil days, to stamp every error as it arose with the reprobation of the infallible judge, and, after empires, and kingdoms, and republics have been racked by a century of the pagan revolt, to prepare again the foundations of Christian civilization. “God has laid on me,” said he to the great assembly of bishops in 1867, “the duty to declare the truths on which Christian society is based, and to condemn the errors which undermine its foundations. And I have not been silent. In the Encyclical of 1864, and in that which is called the Syllabus, I declared to the world the dangers which threaten society and I condemned the falsehoods which assail its life. To you, venerable brethren, I now appeal to assist me in this conflict with error. On you I rely for support. I am aged and alone, praying on the mountain, and you, the bishops of the church, are come to hold up my arms.” “There is perhaps hardly any pontiff,” says Cardinal Manning, “who has governed the church with more frequent exercises of supreme authority than Pius IX.”; and surely there is something magnificent in the courage with which he has met every attack of the world by a new and bolder assertion of the everlasting truths against which the world is in arms. There is not a characteristic heresy of the time for which we Catholics cannot find in the utterances of this great pontiff a complete antidote; there is not a loss inflicted upon the church by her enemies for which we cannot trace a compensation in some clearer recognition of her spiritual power, some sublime restatement of her sovereign authority. Our Holy Father has healed divisions, abolished national and doctrinal parties within the pale of the church, and displayed to the universe the household of Christ one not only in the bonds of faith, but in unity of sympathies. Four times he has summoned the bishops to meet him at the tomb of the apostle. In 1854 more than two hundred bishops and cardinals assembled for the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception—an act which, besides its importance in a doctrinal sense, had a special significance as illustrating the supreme authority of the see of Peter. In 1862, just after the first spoliation of the temporalities of the Papacy by Victor Emanuel, two hundred and sixty-five bishops assembled in Rome for the canonization of the martyrs of Japan, and their meeting, both for the circumstances under which it was summoned and the strong terms in which the prelates expressed their union with the Holy See and their absolute submission to its teachings, made a profound impression throughout Christendom. Five years later the revolution had made immense progress; yet in the midst of political disturbance the world not only saw five hundred bishops gather at Rome to celebrate the centenary of St. Peter’s martyrdom, and again to testify their devotion to Peter’s successor, but it heard the announcement of a general council, the first in three hundred years, called at a time when to the unaided human eye the papal throne seemed tottering to its fall. Here was an inspiring example of faith and Christian courage!
Cardinal Manning’s admirable sketch of the history of the Vatican Council,[[49]] now in course of publication, shows the reasons for calling that grand assembly, and the reasons especially for the definition of infallibility, its supreme and most glorious achievement; and it brings out in clear light the fact that it was with Pius himself that the idea of the council originated. If it could ever be said that a general council was the work of one man, the Council of the Vatican might be called the crowning work of the long life of Pius IX.—one which alone would place him among the most illustrious of all the Roman pontiffs, and make his reign a remarkable era in the history of the Catholic Church. The circumstances of the time which give such immense importance to the convocation of this council are summarized in the opinions of the cardinals to whom the Pope submitted the question as early as 1864, and we find an excellent synopsis of them in the papers by Cardinal Manning already cited. “The special character of the age,” say their eminences, “is the tendency of a dominant party of men to destroy all the ancient Christian institutions, the life of which consists in a supernatural principle, and to erect upon their ruins and with their remains a new order founded on natural reason alone.... From these principles follows the exclusion of the church and of revelation from the sphere of civil society and of science; and, further, from this withdrawal of civil society and of science from the authority of revelation spring the naturalism, rationalism, pantheism, socialism, communism of these times. From these speculative errors flows in practice the modern revolutionary liberalism which consists in the supremacy of the state over the spiritual jurisdiction of the church, over education, marriage, consecrated property, and the temporal power of the head of the church.” These and a multitude of other prevalent errors Pius IX. had condemned in the Syllabus and Encyclical which Cardinal Manning elsewhere refers to as “among the greatest acts of this pontificate,” summing up the declarations of many years, and giving them “a new promulgation and a sensible accession of power over the minds not only of the faithful, but even of opponents, by the concentrated force and weight of their application.”[[50]] But it was expedient that the declaration should be published again with the united voice of the whole episcopate joined to its head. Thus the council was almost unanimously approved as a sovereign remedy for the disorders of the time, an encouragement for the faithful, a cure for dissensions, an antidote for evil tendencies within the church, an impulse to the new and nobler life which even amid the political and social confusion had already begun to spring up among the Catholic peoples. And so, even while the pagan revolution was preparing its last assault upon the pontifical throne, an astonished world witnessed this most majestic demonstration of the authority, the unity, and the power of the church, and the whole body of the faithful were filled with courage and fresh enthusiasm. Driven from his capital, robbed, and insulted, the captive of the Vatican, whose voice rings out clear and firm above the din of the century, whose strong arm sustains, whose saintly example inspires, is yet victor over the world in the council and the Syllabus.
It would be pleasant, if space allowed, to follow the course of his beautiful private life. It is a model of devotion and simplicity. In his great palace he occupies only a plain bed-chamber with a bare stone floor, and a working-cabinet with little furniture except a table and two chairs. He rises, summer and winter, at half-past five. He says Mass, and hears a second Mass of thanksgiving; or if sickness prevents him from celebrating the Holy Sacrifice, he does not fail to receive communion. His hours of work are long and regular. His fare is plain, even to meagreness. Every day he takes exercise in the Vatican gardens, and one of his favorite resorts is a beautiful alley of orange-trees, where the pigeons come to feed from his hand. One day he was discovered with three cardinals, playing “hide and seek” in the gardens with a little boy. Yet with all his gentleness he has a keen and caustic wit. The author of a pious biography sent his book to the Pope for approval. The pontiff read till he came to these words: “Our saint triumphed over all temptations, but there was one snare which he could not escape: he married”; and then he threw the book from him. “What!” said he, “shall it be written that the church has six sacraments and one snare?” Of a Catholic diplomatist whose conduct and professions were at variance he said: “I do not like these accommodating consciences. If that man’s master should order him to put me in jail, he would come on his knees to tell me I must go, and his wife would work me a pair of slippers.” During the French occupation of Rome a certain French colonel was guilty of so gross an offence to the Pope’s authority that the Holy Father demanded his recall. Before his departure he had the effrontery to present himself at the Vatican and ask for a number of small favors, ending with a request for the Pope’s autograph. The Pontiff wrote on a card the words which our Lord addressed to Judas in the garden, “Amice, ad quid venisti?” (“Friend, wherefore hast thou come hither?”), and the colonel, who did not understand Latin, showed it to all his friends as a testimonial of the Pope’s regard, until somebody unkindly supplied him with the translation. It is the etiquette of the Vatican that carriages with only one horse must not enter the inner court. This rule was enforced one day in 1867 against the Prussian ambassador, Count von Arnim, and Bismarck, for purposes of his own, endeavored to make a diplomatic scandal of the transaction, instructing the ambassador to close the legation and quit Rome instantly unless he was allowed to drive with one horse to the very foot of the papal staircase. But Bismarck was no match for Pius IX. The Pope caused Cardinal Antonelli to write that “His Holiness, taking compassion on the difficulties of the diplomatic body, would in future allow the representatives of the great powers to approach his presence with one quadruped of any sort”—avec un quadrupède quelconque. It is believed that the Prussian minister never availed himself of this permission in its full extent.
The newspapers bring us bad news from time to time of the Pope’s health. Let us not be alarmed. He comes of a long-lived family. His grandfather died at ninety-three, his father at eighty-three, his mother at eighty-eight, his eldest brother at ninety. “I am in the hands of God,” he said to an English gentleman; “I shall bless my hour when it comes. But, my son, when I take up certain newspapers nowadays, and do not find in them an account of my last illness and my end, it always seems to me as if the editors had forgotten something.”