Candidates for the Papacy.
"Cardinal Di Gregorio would be a suitable Pope. Although he ranks among the Zelanti, he is not without moderation; he thrusts back the Jesuits, who have as many adversaries and enemies here as in France. Neapolitan subject though he be, Cardinal Di Gregorio is rejected by Naples, and still more by Cardinal Albani[9], the executor of the high decrees of Austria. The cardinal is Legate at Bologna, he is over eighty and he is ill; there is therefore some chance of his not coming to Rome.
"Lastly, Cardinal Giustiniani is the cardinal of the Roman nobility; Cardinal Odescalchi is his nephew, and he will probably receive a fairly good number of votes. But, on the other hand, he is poor and has poor relations; Rome would fear the demands of this indigence.
"You are aware, monsieur le comte, of all the harm that Giustiniani did as Nuncio in Spain, and I am more aware of it than anyone else through the troubles which he caused me after the delivery of King Ferdinand. In the Bishopric of Imola, which the cardinal governs at present, he has shown himself no more moderate; he has revived the laws of St. Louis against blasphemers; he is not the pope of our period. Apart from that, he is a man of some learning, a hebraist, a hellenist, a mathematician, but better suited for the work of the study than for public business. I do not believe that he is backed by Austria.
"After all, human foresight is often deceived; often a man changes on attaining power; the zelante Cardinal Della Genga became the moderate Pope Leo XII. Perhaps, amid the four competitors, a pope will spring up, of whom no one is thinking at this moment. Cardinal Castiglioni[10], Cardinal Benvenuti, Cardinal Galleffi[11], Cardinal Arezzo[12], Cardinal Gamberini, and even the old and venerable Dean of the Sacred College, La Somaglia, in spite of his semi-childishness, or rather because of it, are presenting themselves as candidates. The last has even some hope, because, as he is Bishop and Prince of Ostia, his exaltation would bring about alterations which would leave five great places free.
"It is expected that the Conclave will be either very long or very short: there will be no systematic contests as at the time of the decease of Pius VII.; the 'conclavists' and 'anti-conclavists' have totally disappeared, which will make the election easier. But, on the other hand, there will be personal struggles between the candidates who assemble a certain number of votes, and, as it requires only one more than a third of the votes of the Conclave to give the exclusive, which must not be confounded with the right of exclusion[13], the balloting among the candidates may be prolonged.
"Does France wish to exercise the right of exclusion which she shares with Austria and Spain? Austria exercised it in the preceding conclave against Severoli, through the intermediary of Cardinal Albani. Against whom would the Crown of France exercise that right? Would it be against Cardinal Fesch, if by chance he were thought of, or against Cardinal Giustiniani? Would the latter be worth the trouble of striking with this veto, always a little odious, inasmuch as it trammels independence of election?
"To which of the cardinals would His Majesty's Government wish to entrust the exercise of its right of exclusion? Does it wish the French Ambassador to appear armed with the secret of his Government, and as though ready to strike at the election of the Conclave, if it were displeasing to Charles X.? Lastly, has the Government a choice of predilection? Is there such or such a cardinal whom it wants to support? Certainly, if all the cardinals of family, that is to say the Spanish, Neapolitan and even Piedmontese cardinals, would add their votes to those of the French cardinals, if one could form a party of the crowns, we should gain the day at the Conclave; but those coalitions are chimerical, and we have foes rather than friends in the cardinals of the different Courts.
Reasons against interference.
"It is asserted that the Primate of Hungary and the Archbishop of Milan will come to the Conclave. The Austrian Ambassador in Rome, Count Lützow, talks very cleverly of the conciliatory character which the new Pope must have. Let us await the instructions of Vienna.
"Moreover, I am persuaded that all the ambassadors on earth can do nothing to-day to influence the election of the Sovereign Pontiff, and that we are all perfectly useless in Rome. For the rest, I can see no pressing interest in hastening or delaying (which, besides, is in nobody's power) the operations of the Conclave. Whether the non-Italian cardinals do or do not assist at this Conclave is of the very slightest interest to the result of the election. If one had millions to distribute, it might still be possible to make a pope: I see no other means, and that method is not in keeping with the customs of France.
"In my confidential instructions to M. le Duc de Laval, on the 13th of September 1823, I said to him:
"'We ask that a prelate should be placed on the Pontifical Throne who shall be distinguished for his piety and his virtues. We desire only that he should possess sufficient enlightenment and a sufficiently conciliatory spirit to enable him to judge the political position of governments and not to throw them, owing to useless exigencies, into inextricable difficulties as vexatious to the Church as to the Throne.... We want a moderate member of the Italian zelante party, capable of being accepted by all parties. All that we ask of them in our interest is not to seek to profit by the divisions which may arise among our clergy in order to disturb our ecclesiastical affairs.'
"In another confidential letter, written with reference to the illness of the new Pope Della Genga, on the 28th of January 1824, I again said to M. le Duc de Laval:
"'What we are concerned in obtaining (supposing there should be a new conclave) is that the Pope should, through his inclinations, be independent of the other Powers, that his principles should be wise and moderate, and that he should be a friend of France.'
"Am I, monsieur le comte, to-day, to follow as ambassador the spirit of those instructions which I gave as minister?
"This dispatch contains all. I shall only have to keep the King succinctly informed of the operations of the Conclave and of the incidents that may arise; the only questions will be the counting of the votes and the variations of the suffrages.
"The cardinals favourable to the Jesuits are Giustiniani, Odescalchi, Pedicini[14] and Bertalozzi[15].
"The cardinals opposed to the Jesuits, owing to different causes and different circumstances, are Zurla[16], Di Gregorio, Bernetti, Capellari and Micara[17].
"It is believed that, out of fifty-eight cardinals, only forty-eight or forty-nine will attend the Conclave. In that case thirty-three or thirty-four would effect the election.
"The Spanish Minister, M. de Labrador, a solitary and secluded man, whom I suspect of being frivolous under an appearance of gravity, is greatly embarrassed by the part he is called upon to play. The instructions of his Court have foreseen nothing; he is writing in that sense to His Catholic Majesty's chargé d'affaires at Lucca.
"I have the honour to be, etc.
"P.S.-They say that Cardinal Benvenuti has already twelve votes certain. If that choice succeeded, it would be a good one. Benvenuti knows Europe and has displayed capacity and moderation in different employments."
As the Conclave is about to open, I will rapidly trace the history of that great law of election, which already counts eighteen hundred years' duration. Where do the Popes come from? How have they been elected from century to century?
At the moment when liberty, equality and the Republic were completely expiring, about the time of Augustus, was born at Bethlehem the universal Tribune of the peoples, the great Representative on earth of equality, liberty and the Republic, Christ, who, after planting the Cross to serve as a boundary to two worlds, after allowing Himself to be nailed to that Cross, after dying on it, the Symbol, Victim and Redeemer of human sufferings, handed down His power to His Chief Apostle. From Adam to Jesus Christ, we have society with slaves, with inequality of men among themselves; from Jesus Christ to our time, we have society with equality of men among themselves, social equality of man and woman, we have society without slaves, or, at least, without the principle of slavery. The history of modern society commences at the foot and on this side of the Cross.
The early Popes.
Peter[18] Bishop of Rome inaugurated the Papacy: tribune-dictators successively elected by the people, and most part of the time chosen from among the humblest classes of the people, the Popes held their temporal power from the democratic order, from that new society of brothers which Jesus of Nazareth had come to found, Jesus, the workman, the maker of yokes and ploughs, born of a woman according to the flesh, and yet God and Son of God, as His works prove.
The Popes had the mission to avenge and maintain the rights of man; the heads of public opinion, all feeble though they were, they obtained the strength to dethrone kings with a word and an idea: for a soldier they had but a plebeian, his head protected by a cowl, his hand armed with a cross. The Papacy, marching at the head of civilization, progressed towards the goal of society. Christian men, in all regions of the globe, gave obedience to a priest whose name was hardly known to them, because that priest was the personification of a fundamental truth; he represented in Europe the political independence which was almost everywhere destroyed; in the Gothic world he was the defender of the popular liberties, as in the modern world he became the restorer of science, letters and the arts. The people enrolled itself among his troops in the habit of a mendicant friar.
The quarrel between the Empire and the priesthood is the struggle of the two social principles of the middle ages, power and liberty. The Popes, favouring the Guelphs, declared themselves for the governments of the peoples; the Emperors, adopting the Ghibellines, urged the government of the nobles: these were precisely the parts played by the Athenians and Spartans in Greece. Therefore, when the Popes took side with the kings, when they turned themselves into Ghibellines, they lost their power, because they were disengaging themselves from their natural principle, and, for an opposite and yet analogous reason, the monks have seen their authority decrease, when political liberty has returned directly to the peoples, because the peoples have no longer needed to be replaced by the monks, their representatives.