The Pope Who Would Be King, page 8
If the pope’s remarks to the Consultative Council sparked some doubts, they seemed to put little dent in the pontiff’s popularity. Margaret Fuller’s 1847 reports from Rome to the New York Tribune offered a glowing image of the man all Europe was talking about, the heroic figure who combined deep humanity and humility with a commitment to bringing the retrograde Papal States into modern times.
Pius, Fuller wrote, “has not in his expression the signs of intellectual greatness so much as of nobleness and tenderness of heart, of large and liberal sympathies.” In a typical dispatch later in the year, she described encountering the pope as he stepped out of his carriage to take a walk outside the city walls. “He walked rapidly, robed in a simple white drapery, two young priests in spotless purple on either side; they gave silver to the poor who knelt beside the way, while the beloved Father gave his benediction.” Seeing that one of the people looked ill, Fuller continued, the pope’s face offered the “expression of melting love…which assures all who look on him that, were his power equal to his will, no living thing would ever suffer more.” Fuller, like many others, would soon turn on the pope, but for now she could hardly have been more smitten: “He has shown undoubted wisdom, clear-sightedness, bravery and firmness; but it is, above all, his generous human heart that gives him his power over his people. His is a face to shame the selfish, redeem the sceptic, alarm the wicked, and cheer to new effort the weary and heavy-laden.”31
Margaret Fuller
Yet the signs of trouble ahead were not hard to see. “The retrograde or Jesuits party as it is called,” reported Lord Minto to London, “still occupy most of the posts about the Palace.” They were constantly trying “to alarm [Pius’s] very scrupulous conscience with fears of encroachment upon the Papal authority which his duty to the Church required him to maintain unimpaired.” “The Pope’s head,” observed the British envoy, “is less good than his heart, and he is sadly open to intrigue working upon his religious conscience.” As a result of pressures from the prelates, Minto concluded, the pope had come to distrust the liberals and had decided to resist them.32 Although Pius felt great affinity for the liberals—for the most part, men of the propertied classes—he did indeed resent what he saw as their constant badgering to move further than seemed right to him.33
Where would it all lead? Metternich was convinced that the pope was not up to his task, and perhaps he wasn’t. “Warm hearted, with little imagination,” observed the Austrian chancellor, “he has since his election to the papacy allowed himself to be entangled in a net from which he is no longer able to escape.” But the pope was not the only one who would prove unable to escape the political earthquake that was about to shake Europe. In the end, not only Pius but Metternich as well would be driven into exile, and of the two, only one would return.34
* Pronounced CHEE-chay-roo-AH-kee-oh.
Eighteen forty-eight would prove a fateful year for Europe, a year of revolutionary violence, of monarchs overthrown and bloody wars for independence. To many, it seemed that an exhilarating new era of Enlightenment had dawned. People would be free to decide on their own rulers, free to say and think what they pleased.
Pius got a hint of the coming drama on the very first day of that year. The previous evening, New Year’s Eve, Monsignor Domenico Savelli, his police chief, had come to see him. With a reputation for brutality and widely known as “Monsignor Bulldog”—for his face bore a remarkable similarity to that creature—Savelli was not a popular man. Revolutionaries, he warned the pope, planned to take advantage of the crowd at the pontiff’s New Year’s blessing to trigger a revolt. Perhaps Savelli even thought this was true, although in fact there was no such plot. He reminded Pius of the recent papal decrees forbidding popular demonstrations. The pope instructed him to be sure that all Romans knew that the policy remained in effect.
“But if they ignore this and persist in assembling,” asked Savelli, “what should we do?”
“You have all the necessary means at your disposal,” replied the pope.
Eager to assert the government’s authority, Savelli ordered Civic Guardsmen dragged out of bed to report for emergency duty, along with the rest of the papal armed forces. In the rainy morning, as torrents of water, mixed with mud, ran down the cobblestone streets, people made their way to the Quirinal for the pope’s blessing. To their surprise, they found cavalrymen blocking the palace doors and a large number of police and guardsmen ordering everyone to leave.1
The people were bewildered. Why had Pio Nono barricaded himself in his palace? Many, including Lord Minto, thought it was part of a conspiracy by reactionary forces to provoke a violent clash that would justify foreign military intervention. “It is difficult to say how much of these proceedings,” Minto reported to London, “may be explained by the negligence, stupidity, and mismanagement pervading every department of the Roman administration; but the existence of a design, by any means, to bring about a rupture between the government and the people, is, I think, beyond all doubt.”
On Sunday, January 2, a delegation from the new city council went to see the pope to assure him that there was no danger. They urged him to show himself in public to calm people’s spirits. That afternoon, heeding their advice, Pius emerged from his palace into another gray, rainy day.2
What followed was described by the French ambassador’s assistant as “a truly revolutionary scene, a parody…of the French Revolution.” The pope climbed into his carriage and, without his usual escort, made his way slowly down the Corso through the main streets of the city. “Three hundred people of the worst type,” wrote the disapproving Frenchman, surrounded his carriage, shouting “Death to the Jesuits!” Marching right behind the papal carriage was the popular hero Ciceruacchio, described by the French diplomat as “a kind of butcher turned into a tribune.” He carried a huge placard bearing the words “Holy Father, Justice for the People.” And so, observed the young diplomat, the Vicar of Jesus Christ made his way back to the Quirinal in a procession that was “half sans culottes, half Carnival.” No one had witnessed such a humiliating spectacle, remarked the envoy, since 1792, when the Parisian sans-culottes—militants from the poorer classes—forced King Louis XVI to place the revolutionaries’ cone-shaped red felt cap on his head in an inspired, if cruel, ritual of degradation.3
The dramatic events around New Year’s Day had, thought the British Lord Minto, opened the pope’s eyes to “the treachery by which he is surrounded.” Yet, he observed,
the virtuous Pope is not of sufficient calibre for his position, that is to say for the position of a Sovereign who has little also than fools and rogues to compose his government, and who chooses to be his own prime Minister. He wishes to make his people happy, to give them a good government, good laws, and all kinds of comfort and prosperity. He wishes above all to be beloved and trusted by them. But then he is resolved that they should hold all these good things solely at his will and pleasure….What he would like is liberal measures and arbitrary rule.4
Pius wanted to please his people, and he sympathized with their impatience at the continuing incompetence, corruption, and cruelty of the ecclesiastical government. As an Italian, he was not immune to the emotional pull of the call for freedom from foreign rule in Italy. But surrounded by prelates reminding him of his duty to follow the path laid out by his predecessors, and plagued by self-doubt, he kept sending mixed signals. On January 10, as Pius raised his arms to bless a crowd outside his palace, the pontiff began with words that were music to the patriots’ ears: “God bless Italy!” But shortly after becoming the first pope ever to bless “Italy,” he added, by way of warning, “Do not ask of me that which I cannot, I must not, I wish not to do.”5
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ON JANUARY 9, a manifesto appeared on the walls of Palermo, Sicily’s capital. It would prove to be the first spark in a fire that would burn through much of Europe.
Sicilians!…The protests, the pleas, the peaceful demonstrations have all proved useless, Ferdinando II having shown only contempt for them, and we, a free people, have been reduced to chains and misery. Will we delay any longer in reconquering our legitimate rights? To arms, sons of Sicily, to arms!
The conspirators set the date of the uprising for January 12. On that morning, people began filling the streets, raising a flag bearing Italy’s three colors—red, white, and green. The ringleaders hurriedly passed out what few arms they had been able to get their hands on.
The rebels’ prospects seemed dim, the sides grotesquely uneven. Only a few hundred poorly armed, untrained insurgents, with little in the way of coordination, faced five regiments of Ferdinand’s army, along with royal warships in the harbor and an assortment of castles having heavy artillery surrounding the city, not to mention the city’s police force. But the military was not trained for guerrilla warfare, and shot at and assaulted on the city streets, the soldiers quickly fell back. At the heart of the uprising were Palermo’s highly politicized artisans, with a long history of revolt, and they had the support of many of the city’s poor, who suffered under the brutality of the Bourbon state.
With the king’s army in retreat, the insurgents announced a provisional government. Mixed in with their demand for Sicily’s freedom from Neapolitan rule were calls for democracy, and scattered among the shouts of Viva l’Italia! were cries of Viva Pio Nono! Continuing to invoke the pope’s name, the rebels would drive the king’s army from almost the entire island in the months to come.6
With the uprising soon spreading to the mainland, the pontiff began to worry that it might soon reach Naples itself. Meanwhile his penchant for losing secretaries of state was becoming something of an embarrassment. His first, Gizzi, had lasted only a year, and now his second—his cousin Ferretti—resigned, having served only six months. Both had despaired of the pope’s need to try to please everyone. Pius’s new choice for the position, Giuseppe Bofondi, made a cardinal only the year before, seemed no more likely to succeed than his predecessors, and indeed he would not last very long himself.7
The mood in Rome was not helped by the abysmal weather. It had rained for forty days, and the damp city reeked. “Pour, pour, pour again, dark as night,” wrote Margaret Fuller on a late January afternoon. “Vegetables are few and hard to have, except horrible cabbage, in which Romans delight.” Her nerves on edge from being cooped up, she lashed out at the “wicked organ-grinder” who stationed himself outside her window, hoping for some coins, endlessly replaying the Copenhagen Waltz.8
At the end of January, with protests now erupting in his own capital and desperate to placate his rebellious subjects, King Ferdinand of Naples reluctantly announced that he would grant his people a constitution, proclaiming it to be “the general wish of our beloved subjects.” The constitution he outlined contained an elected lower assembly—a revolutionary innovation in the monarchy—as well as an upper body whose members he would appoint. Bells rang and celebratory masses were held in churches throughout the kingdom. Farther north in the Italian Peninsula, the news produced great excitement among those pushing for reform. If the Kingdom of Naples, long regarded as the most backward and repressive state in Italy, could embrace a constitution, how could rulers elsewhere refuse to do the same?9
To Metternich and those of his circle, news of Ferdinand’s constitution came as a shock. “The game is up,” wrote Prince Schwarzenberg, who would soon succeed Metternich as Austrian chancellor. “The king and his ministers have completely lost their heads.” To this, Metternich replied, “I defy the ministers to lose what they have never possessed.” Within weeks both the king of Sardinia, in Turin, and the grand duke of Tuscany in Florence granted constitutions as well, establishing elected legislative bodies and guaranteeing individual rights. The pressure on the pope to do the same was becoming unbearable, and the strain was showing.10
Pius had recently appointed the first layman, a Roman prince, to his cabinet as minister of war. Rossi, worried that the situation might soon escape the pope’s control, pleaded with him to lose no time in naming other lay ministers to the cabinet. It was crucial, he thought, if the pope was to rally the moderate liberals to his side and isolate the radicals.11
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THERE WAS NOW NO QUESTION that the nightly demonstrations in Rome were far from spontaneous affairs. Demonstrators carried copies of a printed “Proclamation of the People,” which featured the upper-case demand “down with the priest-ministers.” It called for a government of laymen, recommending men “most liberal, and most sincerely attached to Italy’s cause, which is that of independence and freedom.”
“The horrendous threats I heard,” recalled the Dutch ambassador, who had gone outside one night to see what was going on, were “shouted by people who seemed to have blood in their eyes and were carrying long knives.” Violence was averted only when Prince Corsini, senator of Rome, agreed to take a copy of the proclamation to the pope. The crowd waited impatiently until Corsini emerged from the palace and then surged behind him as he made his way to the Piazza del Popolo. There he mounted the platform surrounding the obelisk at the center of the piazza and told them that the pope had said he would soon reply to their demands.12
Two days later the pope’s response came in the form of a large proclamation, a papal crest at its top, pasted on the walls of the city. “Romans!” it began. “The Pontiff is not deaf to your desires, to your fears.” Over the previous two years, it went on to say, he had shown many signs of his love for his people, as he worked to improve the government within the confines of what his duties to the church allowed. He would continue along the same path. “Oh God in your Greatness!” he declared. “Bless Italy, and preserve your most precious gift, faith!”13
Again the pope’s mixed messages, rather than keeping everyone happy, as he hoped, succeeded only in making things worse. Romans seized on his “Bless Italy” as a papal blessing for the war for Italian independence. Thousands gathered in Piazza del Popolo to show their support for driving the foreigners out of the peninsula. At five p.m. a hastily assembled procession set out for the pope’s palace. Units of Civic Guardsmen marched with their banners, as did sympathetic priests, carrying the white-and-yellow papal flag to which they had added Italy’s three colors: green, red, white. Musical bands added to the festivities, playing patriotic songs and odes to the pope. Onlookers crowded the roofs surrounding Quirinal Square. A procession of little children arrived, dressed in miniature Civic Guard uniforms, waving white papal banners.
Feeling beleaguered, Pius summoned his new minister of war, along with the head of the Civic Guard and the commanders of the pontifical army, to meet him in the Quirinal Palace. Asked if he could count on their loyalty, they assured him that he could. Using a phrase he was particularly fond of, Pius told them that he would rather be cut into little pieces than agree to anything that would weaken the church.
Pius IX
He then ordered the door to the balcony flung open. His attendants carried out a red tapestry and placed it over the railing. A great roar arose from the crowd, now grown to tens of thousands, as torch-carrying prelates emerged onto the balcony, followed by a prelate bearing a cross. Then, to thunderous cheers, out strode the pope himself, with the minister of war on his left and the head of the Civic Guard on his right. When Pius raised his arms, silence spread through the piazza, and people fell to their knees. “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” he intoned in Latin. His rich, strong voice could be heard across the piazza. In chorus the crowd responded, “Now and forever.” “Our help is in the name of the Lord,” proclaimed the pope. “Who made heaven and earth,” came the thousands of voices in reply, followed by an oceanic “Amen.”
“I pray to God with all my heart to bless you. May this heavenly blessing be on all of you, on all the land, and on all of Italy.” Although in blessing “Italy” the pope intended simply to bless the people of the peninsula, partisans of Italian unification again chose to believe he had something else in mind. As the pontiff prepared to continue his remarks, a shout rang out, “No more priests in government!”
Startled, the pope paused. “Some cries which are not from the people, but speak only for the few,” he said, “I cannot, I must not, I will not allow.”
“Yes, yes!” came the shouts from the crowd, moved by their love for the pope.
“On condition that you keep your promises to me,” the pope continued as the people again quieted, “I bless you with all my soul.”
At these words, it seemed that the fifty thousand people below would have gladly given up their lives for him. “He’s an angel, he’s an angel,” someone shouted. People’s faces, wet with tears, radiated joy.14
The pressure on the pope to grant a constitution kept growing. The British foreign minister and prime minister both wrote to Lord Minto to advise support for this path. Minto, with his firsthand view of the turmoil in Rome, was of a different opinion. Granting the constitution now, he feared, would “teach the people the bad lesson that they must threaten to obtain what they desire.”15
The Dutch ambassador, longtime deacon of the foreign diplomatic corps in Rome, shared Minto’s view. He, too, worried that the pope’s vacillations and endless concessions to the demands of the crowd were undermining his authority. The similarities to what had happened in the early days of the French Revolution, he observed, were impossible to miss. Then, too, the king had been forced to accept a constitution limiting his powers, amid growing outbreaks of popular unrest.16
