The Pope Who Would Be King, page 36
Before entering Pius’s room for the second of these meetings, Rayneval saw a delegation of Roman Jews leaving. What, asked the ambassador, had they wanted? The Jews, replied the pontiff, had come to complain about the police incursions into the ghetto and to ask for “privileges.” As he spoke, Pius became ever more animated. The Jews had believed—or at least hoped—that the pope’s dependence on the Rothschilds for a loan put them in a position to make demands on him. In fact, although it is not clear if either the pope or Rayneval knew it, before visiting the pope the Jewish delegation had first gone to Naples to meet with Charles Rothschild, head of the local family bank branch. They had begged the Rothschilds not to make the loan unless the pope first agreed to significant concessions.
“I urged these men,” Pius told the French ambassador, “not to get too excited by Mr. Rothschild. I swear to you that if there is the least bit of a question of concessions to make to the Jews as a condition of the loan, three things would result: I would do nothing for the Jews; I would not take the loan; I would not return to Rome.”
The pope added that even if he were inclined to grant the Jews any new rights, the anger that such a move would provoke among his Christian subjects would give him pause. When, in the early months of his papacy, he had authorized a few Jewish families to reside outside the ghetto, he recalled, “the complaints from the tenants in the buildings where the Jews lived were incessant. The same thing happened where they were allowed into public schools.” Nor could the pope imagine allowing the Jews to own property, for soon, he feared, they would buy up much of the land in the Papal States, and that was unthinkable.20
With no other source in sight for his loan, a great deal depended on whether either side would back down. In the end, it was the Paris-based James Rothschild, the most influential of the brothers, who did. Under pressure from both the French and Austrian governments, and eager to keep both indebted to him, Rothschild agreed to settle for a generic papal promise. It came not directly from the pope or Antonelli but through French intermediaries. The pope, they said, could not be seen to condition a matter of theological importance—the treatment of the perfidious Jews—on receiving money from a Jewish family. But once he had the loan, he would, they assured Rothschild, relieve some of the restrictions on his Jewish subjects.21
Those who met with the pope in these weeks were struck by how changed he seemed. A monsignor from one of the offices of the Curia in Rome, having come to visit the pontiff, was surprised to find the formerly benevolent pope so sour. The first thing the pope asked him was whether he had purged his office of all the miserable men who had continued to work there during the republic.22
Pius dreaded the prospect of returning to his capital. The contrast between the early days of his papacy, when he was the object of popular adulation, and the sullen population he knew he would face on his return upset him. He nursed a strong sense of outrage at how poorly the people had repaid him for all he had done for them and embarrassed by how few of his subjects had spoken up for him, how readily they had abandoned him. At the same time, he was surrounded by cardinals who faulted him for his earlier concessions and his weakness. One of the few of their number sympathetic to Pius’s plight tried to defend him to the French: “What do you want the poor pope to do? He is a prisoner, surrounded by his enemies who only let those who are hostile to him or who can redouble his fears get near him.” So battered was the pope, recalled the cardinal, that when he last went to see him, he found him weeping in his oratory. How, the pope had asked him, could he ever return to a city that was full of his enemies?23
Pius seized on one excuse after another to delay his return. “Every day,” lamented the pope’s nephew, who had been pushing his uncle to move back to Rome, “another mushroom sprouts up.”24
* * *
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CARNIVAL, NORMALLY A TIME for joyous abandon, was fast approaching, but as the repression ground on, Rome was not in a festive mood. Antonelli had ordered the mail addressed to those of questionable sympathies opened and anything interesting sent to him in Portici. On their arrival in Rome, all foreign newspapers were read by censors before—if deemed inoffensive—they were sent on to their subscribers. The French placed warnings on the walls that anyone found with a gun or a knife would be summarily executed, but the notices were ripped down as quickly as they could be put up. In mid-February a man from Trastevere was placed in front of a firing squad in Piazza del Popolo, charged with having killed a French soldier. The next week, in another piazza, a large crowd gathered to watch the execution of a forty-year-old man caught the night before carrying arms.25
While the French were having difficulty keeping their notices affixed to Rome’s walls, the papal authorities were having trouble taking down all the subversive messages that were pasted up each night under cover of darkness. On the first anniversary of the proclamation of the Roman Republic, a message from Mazzini appeared:
Romans
You were great in your uprising, and you remain great in this time of disaster. Europe admired you as combatants for your freedom and for Italy’s honor….It admires you today for suffering with dignity without having any cowardly dealings with the internal enemy, and without dishonorable contact with the foreign armed forces that alone govern you….Freedom shines forever and, sooner than others think, will wash away the tyrannical filth that now weighs you down….
God blesses you o Romans! Your exiles today feel joined together with you in spirit on this first anniversary of the Republic. They will celebrate the second with you in the exhilaration of the common victory of the Campidoglio.
Long Live the Republic!26
Eager to show that life in Rome was back to normal, papal authorities saw the traditional eight days of Carnival celebrations as an important test. The past year’s festivities, shortly after the proclamation of the republic, had been an especially joyous affair, embarrassing to the official papal narrative of a people suffering under the yoke of a small band of cutthroat foreign fanatics. Now, hearing mutterings of a planned boycott of the first celebration following the return of papal rule, the government ordered all residents of the Corso—the main parade route—to cover their homes with decorations. Parish priests, who in previous years had warned their flock against the evils of Carnival celebration—traditionally a time of license and debauchery—now urged them to take part.
Despite all these efforts, the festival was an embarrassing failure. Few people decorated their homes, and in place of the endless parade of richly adorned carriages, the Corso seemed eerily empty. Those who might have been inclined to take part were warned off by clandestine flyers. In desperation, the police offered to pay some of the popolani to put on Carnival masks and hop into the carriages they provided, but the effect was more sordid than uplifting.27
Foolishly, a young aristocrat decided to brave the jeering crowd, climbing into his luxurious carriage and telling the driver to pass down the Corso. Alongside him sat his sixteen-year-old sister. As the horses pulled the carriage along, a large bouquet of flowers landed at the prince’s feet. Picking it up to hand it to his sister, he noticed that it felt strangely heavy, for buried in the bouquet was a glass-covered bomb. It exploded, sending shrapnel into the prince’s face, hand, and thigh and slicing through his sister’s leg.28
On Monday, March 11, 1850, Cardinal Antonelli summoned the ambassadors of the four powers for the long-awaited announcement. Pius, he told them, would leave for Rome in early April, the week after Easter.1
Following the meeting, Rayneval went to see the pope, who clearly had mixed feelings about returning to his capital. “I cannot hide the fact,” said Pius, “that I tread into dangers, or at least into embarrassments and countless difficulties. There is no worse task,” he added, “than governing people as demoralized as the people are at the moment. Between the republicans, the constitutionalists, and the absolutists, each more extreme, more passionate than the other, my road ahead will be hard to travel.” This time, it seemed, there would be no turning back. “The ordeal is inevitable,” said the pope. “If I don’t face it today I will have to face it tomorrow. There is no way to postpone it further, and with God’s help, I will go at the announced time to take this heavy burden up once more.”2
Declining the ship the French had offered for the voyage, Pius decided to travel by land. He felt confident that the rural people of the southernmost Papal States would greet him affectionately, offering proof that his subjects were eager to have him back. He was less confident about the reception that would greet him in Rome.
Antonelli threw himself into the work of ensuring the trip’s success, bombarding the cardinals of Rome’s governing commission with instructions. “News received by the police in Naples,” wrote Antonelli in one of his memos, “express the certainty that, on the Holy Father’s reentry into his dominion, the Roman demagogues plan to greet him with festive demonstrations of affection, thus gathering a large crowd, and then start shouting ‘Long live the Constitution and the National Guard!’ ” The police, instructed Antonelli, had to find a way to thwart “their perverse plan.”3
On April 3, the day before the pope’s departure, Rayneval again went to see him, telling him how pleased France was that, despite all those who kept trying to frighten him, he was finally returning to Rome.
The pope remained nervous. “They have even told me,” said the pontiff, “that France would return to its old demands, that it would impose a constitution and all that follows from it on me.”
Rayneval reassured him. The French had long ago abandoned their demand that he reign as a constitutional monarch.4
* * *
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THE DAY OF THE POPE’S departure from Portici finally arrived. He first set out for the king’s palace outside Naples to thank him for sheltering him for his many months in exile. On Pius’s arrival, Ferdinand bowed and kissed the pope’s foot and his hand. Pius remained with the royal family that night.5
The next morning the pontiff stepped onto the external balcony of Ferdinand’s palace to offer his blessing to the small crowd that had gathered outside. He then walked down the grand marble staircase, pausing to let the members of the royal family, on their knees, kiss his foot. According to the official Neapolitan chroniclers, the princesses all had tears in their eyes. With royal troops lining its path, the richly adorned carriage carrying the pope and the king led a procession of seven carriages, each pulled by six horses. A long phalanx of Neapolitan cavalry rode in front and behind them. As the pope’s carriage passed through the fields north of Naples, peasants took their hats into their hands, dropped to a knee, and bowed their heads.6
Ferdinand made the most of his final hours with the pope. Naples’s official newspaper published a rapturous account of their parting at the northern border of the Neapolitan kingdom on April 6:
His Holiness, the king, and the duke…had barely gotten out of the carriage, when the king and the duke threw themselves at the Holy Father’s feet, which they devoutly embraced. Then the king, still on his knees, asked for the sacred blessing. “Yes,” said the Holy Father, “I bless you, I bless your family, I bless your kingdom, I bless your people. I cannot properly express to you my gratitude for the hospitality you have given me.” “I only did my duty as a Christian,” the king replied. “Yes,” responded the pontiff, his voice heavy with emotion, “your filial affection was great and sincere.” He then made the king rise….He embraced him effusively and got back into his carriage, where the king, the royal prince and their entourage all kissed him on the foot.7
As Pius then made his way through the southernmost towns of his states, he passed through hastily erected triumphal arches, choirs singing odes of praise to him, and official delegations from nearby towns who came to pay their respects. Bishops and local elites jostled one another in efforts to greet him.
At Velletri, a town nestled in the Alban Hills thirty miles southeast of Rome, General Baraguey and his entourage met the pope to escort him the rest of the way to his capital. The general was eager, as he put it, “to completely banish the terrors that [the pope] has not stopped having.”8
It was at Velletri, a year earlier, that Garibaldi had dealt King Ferdinand such an embarrassing blow. The scene now was very much changed. People’s excitement that the pope would be coming to their town was great, the preparations frenetic. Local would-be sculptors fashioned faux classical figures, fastening them onto a hurriedly constructed triumphal arch. Over the doors of the city hall, half a dozen painters were inscribing paeans to Pius IX. One, in his enthusiasm, simply wrote, “Pio Nono. Immortal! Immortal! Immortal!” Others painted allegories of the pope, in one of which, oddly, he appeared in the shape of a female angel with her foot on a demon bearing the label “rebellion.” A huge effigy of the pope, made of numerous sheets attached to wooden planks, hung atop the triumphal arch, fluttering perilously in the hill town’s afternoon wind. A half-dozen town dignitaries milled about in evening dress, looking out of place among the roughly dressed peasants and artisans.
At last, in late afternoon, following a line of cavalry, the pope’s carriage rolled into town. As Pius passed by, the troops presented arms, and the people knelt. The pontiff stopped in front of the town hall, but the awestruck local dignitaries were too tongue-tied to deliver the speeches of welcome they had so carefully prepared. The carriage door opened, and the pope put out his foot, as people elbowed their way to get close enough to kiss it. After a brief mass of thanksgiving in the cathedral, Pio Nono made his way to the palace perched at the crest of the town, in front of which thousands of people from Velletri and its hinterland had converged. Cannons blasted and music blared. Surrounded by priests holding torches aloft, Pius emerged on the balcony. As the people quieted, the pontiff stretched out his arms to bless them.9
There was reason to doubt that the pope would receive such a warm welcome when he reached his capital. “The people’s mood is not favorable to any demonstrations of joy,” reported the Tuscan ambassador in Rome. He explained:
The remnants of the destruction and the disasters they have suffered are largely still there. Rome’s appearance saddens any who see it again, even in these moments preceding the pope’s return. The population, decimated by the war, by the banishments, by the jailings, and by the voluntary emigrations, makes the city seem empty….Sadness and discouragement reign.10
The French were on high alert, as signs of trouble ahead abounded. Roman women, police were told, were planning a protest to embarrass the pontiff on his arrival. Leaflets containing Mazzini’s calls for resistance had mysteriously appeared on city walls, and police interrupted three men as they piled pieces of wood against the door of the pope’s Quirinal Palace, preparing to set it ablaze.11
At midafternoon on Friday, April 12, Pius finally appeared at the city’s western gate. The last time he passed through one of Rome’s gates, seventeen months earlier, he had been disguised as a country priest. Now on his triumphal return, the pealing of Rome’s church bells greeted him, punctuated by the sound of 101 cannon blasts from Castel Sant’Angelo. The lumbering procession made its way to the vast sunbathed piazza in front of the pope’s cathedral, St. John Lateran, where a large crowd awaited. When the pope stepped out of his carriage, a cheer went up and handkerchiefs were waved, but as the London Times correspondent noted, “the enthusiasm that is valuable is that which does not boast of such a luxury as handkerchiefs. Very few people seemed to think it necessary to kneel, and, on the whole, the mass were more interested in the pageant itself.” As Pius entered the vast cathedral, Rome’s cardinal vicar, along with the three cardinals of the governing commission, greeted him. Prostrating themselves, members of the diplomatic corps, in their dark uniforms, kissed the pope’s hand. Pius could not hide his emotion. Entering the nave of the church, he sank to his knees at the tomb of Peter and Paul to pray.
The papal procession then set out on its course to the other side of the city. Richly dressed papal soldiers led the way, followed by French cavalry, a detachment of Noble Guardsmen, and then the pope’s own closed carriage, General Baraguey riding on one side, Prince Altieri, head of the Noble Guard, on the other. The French senior command followed on horseback, then other French troops, eight cardinals, each in his own luxurious carriage, members of the city government, and finally the twenty members of the diplomatic corps. Colorful tapestries and garlands of flowers adorned the buildings along the way. Lining the route, French troops dropped to a knee as the pope passed. The procession finally crossed the Tiber and reached St. Peter’s Basilica, where other cardinals were waiting. Thousands of people were already inside, along with a line of French troops positioned against either wall. The pope entered, and a mass of thanksgiving was said. The cardinals then escorted the pope to his apartment in the adjoining Vatican Palace.
Pius IX would remain in Rome for another quarter century, but never again would he live in the Quirinal Palace. Its memories were too painful. His change of residence signaled something else as well. The Quirinal was first of all the symbol of political power, of the pope as king of the Papal States. The Vatican was the center of the pontiff’s religious authority, worldwide in reach. The Pius who returned to Rome wanted as little as possible to do with the political role that had caused him so much heartache. For those matters, he would let Antonelli, more suited to that other world, take charge. Over the next years, as momentous historical changes took shape around him, the pope would retreat ever more into his religious role, finding solace in the spiritual realm. No more would he allow himself to be tortured by doubts about how best to deal with his people’s endless political demands.12
