The grand Piazza of St. Peter's would have been at its grandest that day had the sky been true to the Papacy. Nothing but the heavens failed. From every opening into the Piazza flowed the eager crowds. They passed the two hundred and eighty columns, natives sheltering under their umbrellas, strangers compelled by admiration to look up. They passed the Obelisk, those who had history in their memory, thinking of Nero and of the scenes by him enacted. They passed the Inquisition, perhaps wondering what priests were imprisoned now, and if there were any bishops, and who; perhaps thinking how strange it was that side by side should stand the memorials of Nero and the chambers of the Inquisition. Then up the steps and across the Portico. At the same time, the coaches of the great swept to the right into the Vatican. About three hundred of these were splendidly horsed, gilt round the top, gilt at all available points, hung high on springs, with four or five servants, in yellow and blue, red and green, embroidered, powdered, and in cocked hats. The few pensive monuments of retrospective royalty that still clave to the skirt of the Pontiff, formed the first line of this array. Then came the thrice-splendid princes of the Church. Each rode in his state carriage, followed, says Frond (vol. vii. p. 91), by a second carriage, "less sumptuous." and if a prince—we presume by birth—followed by a third. Then came the nuncios, ambassadors, bishops, and notabilities with starry breasts, and ribbons like streamers among the stars—stars that dazzle Romans far more than all the constellations in the sky. The Roman nobles, always splendid, were that day in their fulness of gold, and pearls, and costly array; and their equipages are said to have counted several hundreds. No less than five hundred private ones and some two thousand street carriages completed the train. Roman ecclesiastics could not help remarking, even in print, that from a one-horse hackney coach might be seen alighting a couple of bishops, and four from a two-horse one; a sight which they contrasted with the princely splendour of Constance and of Trent. At the bridge of St. Angelo, and at other important points, rose up in the rain the mounted figures of the Papal dragoons in their long white cloaks. A plentiful display of soldiers, said to amount to about six thousand, increased the variety. Black-clad Barnabite, and brown Franciscan, broad-hatted Jesuit and white Camaldolese, with all the costumes of the barrack, the convent, the nunnery, mingled with those of the drawing-room and the village festival, spangled the thickening crowd.
The clergy of the city had early assembled in sufficient number to line the whole course of the procession, until it reached the statue of St. Peter. Within, the crowd is not represented by any writer as having been excessive. Some say that the church was full, some that it was not quite so. The people arrived in wet clothing, and as none of them, least of all the monks, were given to excessive ablutions, even the correspondent of the Stimmen aus Maria Laach alluded to the quality of the air. So also did the Special Correspondent of the Times; but he remarked that "incense covers a multitude of perfumes." In the various side chapels, Masses were being celebrated, each priest, as he came up to the altar, or retired from it, being preceded by two soldiers under arms, and followed by one. There were upon duty in that temple of peace, opened for a great council of peace, one battalion of zouaves and one of the line.
The soldiers of Diocletian and Galerius, when beginning their work one February morning, while the two Emperors watched them from their palace windows in Nicomedia, would not have been so much at a loss had they entered a temple like St. Peter's, as they found themselves in the Christian church into which they then broke. "They searched in vain," says Gibbon, "for some visible object of worship. They were obliged to content themselves with committing to the flames the volumes of the Holy Scriptures." They could have found no Bible in St. Peter's to burn, unless they had taken to a sumptuous book, in a dead language, containing portions of the Gospels. But they would not have searched in vain for visible objects of worship. Just as even Father Abraham had been turned into chief idol in the Caaba by the heathen Arabs, so here the chief of the images set up was Peter. But never had he been so dressed in Galilee or Jerusalem, in Antioch or Babylon, with alb, girdle, stole, and tiara. The Popes might have ill copied the living Peter, but the bronze Peter had well copied the Popes. The Fisherman would have been surprised at his own pluvial. As clerical writers would blush not to tell, it was of red silk, striped with gold. On his breast was a golden cross; on his right hand a golden ring, with a large ruby, and a circle of "flashing brilliants," and the left hand held a golden key all decked with precious stones. Before him burned a lamp, and four superb wax candles painted like the illuminations of books. As all men honour their gods with what they value most, the Vatican honours Peter by feeding the jeweller and laceman in his soul with marrow and fatness, and by the sight of men kissing his feet. Peter had his faults, but he never deserved to be so paganized. True, he did forget himself when he got into the palace of the Jewish priest, but not in the same way as the bishop on the Tiber forgot himself when he got into the palace of the Roman Pontiff. That, however, was Peter before he was converted. Peter, after he was converted, passed the threshold of a Roman. Then, he strengthened his brethren, not by lording it either over their persons or their faith, but by teaching a lesson in action, to the effect that no human being should ever degrade his person before a fellow-man, and that the forms of worship, as well as the spirit of it, are to be reserved for Him whom alone it is lawful for the offspring of God to adore. Peter would not break the commandment that said, "Be not ye called rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ" (Matt. xxiii. 8-10).
There in a nutshell lies the whole theory of a direct government as against one by proxy; of a father's government of adult sons, as against a master's government of slaves through upper servants; of one all-watching love, and one all-working care, as against an imperial reclusion that leaves affairs to departmental divinities. "Our Father which art in heaven," deeper is Thy love to the least of us, more tender and closer far than could be that of any patron whom we might set up! In numbering the hairs of our heads, no Vicar dost Thou employ! In drawing near to Thee, no interest of Thy freedmen do we require, for we are no longer slaves, but in Thy love, the love of a Father, dost thou invite every one of us to the adoption and therefore to the access of sons!
He, who had once shaken his brethren, did not afterwards strengthen them by telling them that they must all accept him as rabbi, father, and master in the absence of their Lord, while to him there was but one Master, Christ. Just as Peter was ready, in his own person, to keep the commandment, "Be not ye called masters," so would he have been the very first to uphold the corresponding commandment, "Call no man master." He well knew that this applied pointedly and particularly to the ministers and disciples of the religion of Christ as such; for he was one of the first to teach both due reverence and due obedience to that civil authority which the Popes live to make little more than a sword under their own power.
The Italian Protestant and the Rabbi would both watch the thousands performing the adoration of St. Peter. The Italian Protestant would think of rites to Romulus, or perhaps to Hercules, whose local story was still more mythical. The Rabbi would think with scorn of the impossibility of such a spectacle in a synagogue over a dressed-up image of Aaron, for the Jews had never reformed the decalogue. He would mentally quote Jeremiah: "The stock is a doctrine of vanities. Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the work of the workman, and of the hands of the founder; blue and purple is their clothing, they are all the work of cunning men."[202] Educated Hindus are now often to be seen in Rome. Any of them who witnessed this scene, and heard priests complacently point out the distinctions by which simple Westerns are lulled into the notion that this is theoretically a different kind of worship from that paid to lesser gods and to images by Brahmans, would take the distinctions in his supple fingers and snap them as easily as he would so many threads of the finest Dacca looms. The Pundits were in this, as in many things, elder and abler brethren of the priests.
Friedrich, in his Doctor's robes, formed one of the promiscuous crowd; for mere theologians in Rome did not pass for much. No one has told us where Quirinus stood, or what was his toilet. It is not even clear whether his spirit was vested in a German or an English frame, although probabilities are in favour of the latter. Vitelleschi was there too, with his Roman familiarity with men, forms, and projects. And there was Lord Acton, the Roman Marchese, brother to a bishop, soon to be a Cardinal; the English Baron nephew to a Cardinal. M. Frond would be in exceedingly great glory. M. Veuillot, frightened, he says, by the rain, was in his rooms by the Piazza di Spagna, describing to the Univers what he calls "the moral of the ceremony"—a fact which he states long afterwards (i. p. 73). He acknowledges that he did not smell the odour of the crowd; but not on that account is he to be told that he did not see the first session. He went to the top of the Pincio about noon, saw the dome and the Vatican wrapped in fog and rain, and the sky laden as if with storms for all time. But he saw the Council as one ought to see it, and as history will see it; and never on the sunniest morning did the hill of Peter, the mountain where God dwells, appear more luminous to him.
Correspondents of the Civiltá published on the spot, of the Stimmen published on the Rhine, of distant journals in America and the East, were revelling in the Catholicity and brilliancy of the spectacle, and preparing to transmit across the Alps and across the seas some vibration of the transports by which every now and then they were themselves thrilled. The untonsured but inevitable correspondents of the profane Press were there, odious in forms unknown.
Liberal Catholics from different countries were there in numbers, striving to hope against hope, now thinking of the courage of their national bishops, now of the moderation of the Pontiff; and now exercising faith in the good stars of the Church, but trusting that, somehow or other, credit to the Catholic cause would result from the Council, instead of Jesuit fighting, followed by disaster, which they had too much ground to fear.