The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, page 26
Cardinal Milesi, whom Edgardo’s uncles had so desperately sought out the previous year, finally recognized that he would have to go. At 9 a.m., guarded by a squad of papal soldiers, he was allowed to leave the Palazzo Comunale unmolested. Just before departing, he issued a proclamation, his last: “Bolognesi. The Austrian garrison has left this city. This does not, however, mean the end of the solemn agreements by which the Sovereignty of the Holy Father is guaranteed by both of the Catholic Emperors who are now belligerents [i.e., Austria and France].” The Legate concluded: “I appeal to the good sense of this city and province. All those who love order join me to maintain and defend it. And it will be maintained, if the first and most sacred of rights—that of the Prince, the Holy Father—is respected.”6
In response to this appeal, members of the hastily assembled provisional government of Bologna proclaimed the city’s adherence to the “War of Independence” and their desire to have Bologna annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia. That night, homes throughout the city were ablaze with candles and gaslights celebrating the end of papal rule, and huge crowds gathered, caught up in the festivities. The city band marched through the streets, trailed by a line of men holding flaming torches aloft to light the way, with the chords of popular tunes rumbling through the air.7
The day of the Austrians’ departure was the Sunday of Pentecost, the day of Confirmation. Notwithstanding the mayhem, the city’s children who were scheduled to be confirmed that year, dressed in white, gathered in Bologna’s cathedral. The children saw a strange, almost surreal sight, as one such child recalled years later.
Alberto Dallolio first noticed that something odd was happening when he and his grandfather, hand in hand, passed near the central piazza on their way to the cathedral. A rowdy procession was moving toward them, shouting—in obvious joy—muffled words whose meaning the boy could not make out. A boisterous man led them, waving a large flag and heading toward the piazza. When they passed, one of the men stopped Alberto’s grandfather and pulled something out of a box he carried. It was a little, brightly colored ribbon, which the man attached to the buttonhole of the grandfather’s jacket. He then turned to the boy and fastened the tricolored cockade to him as well. Wearing the cockade on his confirmation suit, Alberto entered San Pietro cathedral. Who knows, he later wrote, what a disagreeable impression he must have made on Cardinal Viale-Prelà as he did so.8
The Archbishop indeed found himself in an impossible position, one that was deeply galling. Although the Cardinal Legate might flee, he could not. He was pastor of the flock, responsible for the souls of all those in his diocese. He was urgently needed where he was, to defend a Church and a Pope under merciless attack.
On the very day of the Austrian departure, a delegation of noblemen and others from the provisional government met with the Archbishop to assure him that he would not be harmed, nor would he be prevented from exercising his religious duties. But Cardinal Viale-Prelà was not won over. The new governors were illegitimate usurpers of papal authority, and he could not recognize their right to rule. The Cardinal’s newspaper, L’osservatore bolognese, centerpiece of his campaign for religious renewal, was closed down by the new government, charged with subversion.9
The Archbishop’s first acts of defiance were fueled by the deep repugnance he felt toward the rebels and the sacrilege they were committing against the Church. But his efforts were sustained as well by the hope that a day of reckoning might soon come when the proper order would be restored and the rebels would receive their just deserts. In Rome, as news of one setback after another came in, Cardinal Antonelli continued to place events of 1859 in the mold that had been established for him by the revolt of a decade before. A month after the fall of Bologna, the British military attaché, Odo Russell, reported in a letter to London:
The Cardinal Secretary of State, who is also Minister of War, told me yesterday that at the beginning of the year the Papal army numbered about 8000 men: 2500 had deserted to join the Piedmontese army so that the army of His Holiness was now reduced to about 5500 men. His Eminence was organizing new regiments and recruitment was carried on with great energy so as to bring the Papal army to its normal condition which was 14,000 men.
This was to be effected by the end of the year and Cardinal Antonelli assured me that he sincerely hoped he could by that time insist on the withdrawal of the French army of occupation from Rome and Civitavecchia—a measure he now had more than ever at heart. The French Government had obtained from King Victor Emmanuel the recall of Marquis d’Azeglio from Bologna. The next step, he hoped, would be the withdrawal of the Piedmontese troops from the Legations, and once they were free, His Eminence foresaw no difficulty in attacking and reconquering those rebellious provinces. At the request of the Emperor he had given up the idea of breaking off diplomatic relations with Sardinia and in return he expected France would keep order on this side of the Apennines while the Papal troops effected the submission of the Legations.
Cardinal Antonelli seemed very sanguine as to success of these measures. Perhaps His Eminence is not aware that the Emperor’s positive orders to General Goyon at the commencement of the war were to maintain order in and about Rome, but in no way to interfere in any other portion of the Papal States.10
In fact, the arrival of Massimo d’Azeglio, sent to Romagna as emissary of the Kingdom of Sardinia, had triggered a new confrontation with Cardinal Viale-Prelà, for he viewed it as the first step toward annexation, recognition by King Victor Emmanuel II that Bologna and all Romagna were part of his expanded kingdom. Two years after crowds had lined the streets leading into the city to catch an eager glimpse of the Pope’s triumphal entry, they reappeared to welcome D’Azeglio. His horse-drawn carriage made its slow way through the flag-draped city streets as a shower of flowers and garlands rained down from the windows. By the time the carriage had reached Piazza Maggiore, it was so covered with flowers that the Marquis could barely be seen. Behind him marched a long line of militiamen—many mustered as quickly into the new service as they had been unceremoniously mustered out of the old—followed by officials of the new provisional government, trailed by hundreds of carriages carrying Bologna’s elite, paying tribute to the new rulers.
Repeating Pius IX’s gesture of two years before, the Marquis entered the Palazzo Comunale and climbed to the window overlooking the throbbing piazza. To the right, he saw the majestic facade of San Petronio, lit by six huge candelabra and adorned with banners and wreaths. To his left was the medieval Palazzo del Podestà, washed in shadowy light by the flickering flames that burned in a huge pot on its roof. Amidst those flames stood eight placards, each bearing the name of a recent victorious battle waged by the allies along with the insignia of the House of Savoy. On the far side of the piazza, the banners of Bologna and of Savoy hung together, alongside the Italian and French flags, while in the middle of the piazza stood a bust of the King—pathetically small, given the grandeur of the piazza and the splendor of the occasion, but the best that the patriotic artist could come up with on such short notice. The aroused multitude, viscerally moved by the spectacle of so much light after nightfall and by the sounds of the four military bands and the cheers of their delirious compatriots, shouted for D’Azeglio to come out and address them. The Marquis, amazed at the sight, walked onto the balcony and waved to the crowd.
Amidst the lights of the city, one large palazzo, that of the Archbishop, remained conspicuously dark. The gesture did not go unnoticed. Angry crowds made their way to his courtyard, hurling insults and muttering profanities. When at last they were driven out by the police, they left behind a grove of candles to illuminate the buildings.11
Accustomed to reading L’osservatore bolognese, Il vero amico, and other papers reporting local news through ecclesiastical eyes, the people of Bologna soon found themselves getting a very different picture. New papers sprang up, singing the virtues of the Savoyard king and praising the courageous soldiers of national unification. Anticlerical sentiment—indigenous to Bologna and Romagna, where the Church had long been identified with autocratic rule—was overnight transformed from furtive mutterings into black-and-white, official-looking declarations.
On August 17, for example, Bologna’s new Gazzetta del popolo addressed the rural peasants, who, it was feared, were especially susceptible to the clergy’s cries of alarm. “Your Priests have deceived themselves, and they deceive and hurt you immensely by speaking constantly against the new government.… Did the Pope’s government ever make you happy?” asked the correspondent. He continued: The Pope, in an attempt to hold on to his kingdom, and the priests, out of ignorance, claimed that papal rule was necessary for the Pontiff’s free exercise of his spiritual duties. “But we can ask, just how is it that a sovereign is free in his rule when he relies on some other power to keep him on the throne?” And wasn’t it Jesus himself who said, “My reign is not of this earth?… Perhaps our religion isn’t exercised freely in Piedmont? The Priests say it isn’t. But how dare they utter such a lie? In Piedmont there are more priests than there are here, and more beautiful churches, and everyone goes to mass when they like.” Warming to the theme, and styling himself as the true defender of the message of Christ, the indignant correspondent concluded: “How dare the representative of Jesus Christ tell such lies so that he can continue to hold wealth and lands, and what is worse, wealth and lands that are not his. How dare he excommunicate people because they have taken from him that which he has no right to have.… Shame! Shame! don’t you see that the Pope is deceiving you?”12
Just a week earlier, in one of his first official acts, the new governor general of Romagna proclaimed freedom of religion and the equality of all citizens before the law. Jews were now, for the first time since Christianity became the official faith of the Roman Empire—with the brief exception of the Napoleonic period—to enjoy the same rights as Christians. In November 1859, just seventeen months after the Inquisitor had ordered Edgardo seized, Luigi Carlo Farini, dictator of the former duchies of Modena and Parma, and Governor of Romagna, issued a declaration abolishing the Inquisition. Denouncing the inquisitorial court as “incompatible both with civilization and with the most basic principles of public and civil rights,” it noted that civilized nations everywhere had already done away with such courts, and that only in the Papal States did they remain.13
The Archbishop lost no time doing what he could to protect his diocese from the influence of all the anticlerical writings that appeared in the wake of the Austrians’ departure. At the end of August he issued a notice, printed on large sheets of paper and posted on churches throughout the diocese, warning people of the “grave danger” that these publications posed. “We are distressed to see insults and profanities hurled at the Sacred Person of the one who, possessing the supreme authority of the Church, should be the object of our veneration and our love.” After condemning, as well, the alarming upsurge in offensive theatrical performances, Viale-Prelà concluded: “We strongly recommend that you follow the example of the faithful of the primitive Church, of those of whom we read in the Acts of the Apostles, who threw evil books into the flames.”14
The problem persisted, and so the Cardinal issued yet another ecclesiastical warning a few months later, in early December, alerting his flock to the “pernicious and reprehensible means being employed to destroy your faith … and to drag the unwary and the ignorant into the deadly abyss of heresy.… Toward this end,” the Archbishop continued, “ungodly little books are being offered and sold to you at low cost, heaping hatred and mockery on the saintly Catholic Church, trampling its authority, and ridiculing its doctrine.” Viale-Prelà concluded his new appeal, as he had the last, with the fervent hope that the faithful would treat these publications as they deserved, “throwing them in the flames, as we know some of you have already done.”15
The battle was joined, fought on the one side through ecclesiastical proclamations and ritual sanctions and on the other by popular demonstrations and a spate of journalistic attacks. Enrico Bottrigari, in September, offered the patriots’ view of Cardinal Viale-Prelà’s battle against the new regime: “Our Archbishop, as could be expected, remains hostile to the new order of things and publishes Notifications full of lies, trying to make people believe that pious acts and sacred functions are being opposed or prevented.” Some priests, Bottrigari reported, had cooperated with the new rulers, but the Archbishop had moved quickly to suspend them from their ecclesiastical offices.16
The ritual struggle was a two-way affair. Far from being a Church monopoly, ritual served as the primary means by which the new rulers constructed their regime, covering themselves with the mantle of legitimacy, instructing people in their ideology, and rousing them to a state of excitement.17 Most galling of all for Bologna’s embattled Archbishop was the constant stream of requests from the usurpers to involve priests in the counter-rites of the new state, in a brazen attempt to use the Church to legitimize the new regime.
Bologna’s patriotic elite needed to demonstrate to the rest of the world that the people of Romagna fully supported the new regime and wanted to be part of the kingdom of Sardinia. The elite also faced the problem of instructing the overwhelmingly illiterate population in just what the new state consisted of, making them feel part of it, and convincing them that they were happy about it. Publishing newspapers that sang the praises of the new state and attacked the Pope was all well and good, but only a small portion of the population could read them. And reading an article that claimed that the people of Bologna were enthusiastic about the new government was considerably less convincing, and less emotionally engaging, than participating with thousands of others in mass rites in which the sacred symbols of the new order were trotted out and the new sacred songs sung.
In the early days following the flight of the Cardinal Legate from Bologna, when the old regime had been battered but it was not yet clear that it would not return, public ritual filled a pressing need for order, for definition of political reality amidst chaos, and for reaffirming bonds of fellowship at a time of potential fratricide. For Bologna’s new rulers, the main task was getting people to shift their allegiances from the Church and Rome to the King and Italy. Just as the succession of leaders of the French Revolution devoted great energies to crafting public rites to help define and legitimize the new political order for the aroused but confused masses, so too did Bologna’s leaders put together an exhausting—but hopefully exalting—series of new patriotic rites.18
When the newly formed Assembly of Romagna held its first meeting, in Bologna, on the first of September, 1859, delegates unanimously approved two resolutions. With echoes of the American Declaration of Independence, they proclaimed: “We, the representatives of the people of Romagna, convened in general assembly, swearing the righteousness of our intentions to God, do declare: (1) That the peoples of Romagna … no longer want pontifical, temporal government; (2) That the peoples of Romagna want annexation to the constitutional Kingdom of Sardinia, under the scepter of Victor Emmanuel II.”19
The Assembly sent representatives to present these resolutions to the King. Their return from Turin, with a friendly message from Victor Emmanuel II in hand, was taken as a proper occasion for ritually marking the link between the people of Romagna and their not-quite-yet monarch. The Bologna City Council was the first to take the initiative, proclaiming a day of popular festivity to give thanks to the Almighty. Given the historical connotations of San Petronio—the massive church on Piazza Maggiore where Charles had been crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1530—it was there that the Christian part of the ritual would have to take place. Following a Te Deum sung in the church, a ceremony would be held placing the glorious coat of arms of the House of Savoy above the main gate of the Palazzo Comunale. And, in a further symbolic transubstantiation, Piazza Maggiore itself would be rechristened: the sacred center of Bologna would take the new name of Piazza Victor Emmanuel. To mark the occasion, finally, a marble plaque would be put up on the front of the palace, recording the great day for prosperity.
The rites that October day went largely according to plan; the cavernous San Petronio released its huge crowd at the end of the Te Deum to mingle with the multitudes already gathered in the piazza. Amidst great enthusiasm and the stirring music of patriotic bands, the Savoyard coat of arms was raised, artillery was sounded, and church bells were rung. Yet something was missing. The Archbishop had instructed the priests of San Petronio not to take part in the event. Since it was inconceivable to have such a rite without the clergy, chaplains from the local military regiment—who were not under the Archbishop’s authority—were brought in to do the honors. Cardinal Viale-Prelà himself arranged to be out of town on the day of the celebrations, saying mass instead in one of the rural parishes of his diocese. He was no longer a well man—indeed, although not old, he did not have much longer to live—and as he raised the host in preparation for offering communion that day, he fell to the ground in a faint. Commenting on this juxtaposition, the uncharitable Bottrigari wrote: “Political events are giving the Cardinal severe indigestion!”20
The patriotic rites enacted in Bologna were repeated in communities throughout Romagna, tying the people to the new government and demonstrating their new Savoyard loyalties to the rest of the world, especially to the Catholic powers who needed to be convinced that it was the people themselves who wanted to shift their political allegiance from the Pope to the King. In community after community the same ritual battle was joined, as parish priests, under orders from the Archbishop, refused to preside over the sacrilegious ceremonies and did what they could to keep the secular celebrants out of their churches altogether.
