The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (16 page)

The following month Garibaldi marched into Rome at the head of his volunteer army, and enthusiastic crowds gathered in the piazzas, abuzz with enthusiasm for the proclamation of a republic. As we have seen, in February 1849, disregarding Pius IX’s January excommunication of all those who sought to overturn the Pope’s secular rule, a Constitutional Assembly proclaimed the end of the Pope’s temporal power and the establishment of a Roman Republic. Among the first articles of its constitution was the granting of equal rights to all. The Jews were once again liberated, although not for long.
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In response, the Pope called on the Catholic powers—Austria, France, Spain, and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies—to send their armies to restore papal rule. On July 3, French troops marched into Rome, defeated the forces of the short-lived Roman Republic, and retook the Holy City for the Pope. Meanwhile, Austrian troops marched through much of the rest of the peninsula, reestablishing the ancien régime. When, a year after the French reconquest of Rome, Pius IX thought it safe enough to return to Rome, he arrived to a cold reception. Whatever sympathy the Pope had earlier harbored for specific liberal reforms had by now vanished. The task he saw before him was that of reestablishing the prestige and power of the papacy. The reforms granted in 1848 were abolished, the experiment with limited constitutional government was ended, and, protected by French troops in Rome and Austrian troops elsewhere in the Papal States, he struggled to bring law and order back to his realm.

The battle involved not only police, soldiers, and courts; it was waged on ideological terrain as well. Proper Catholic values had to become better rooted in the population, and for this, Pius IX—whose example Cardinal Viale-Prelà would soon imitate in Bologna—turned to the Jesuits.

Championed by a young Neapolitan Jesuit, Father Carlo Curci, the idea of a Jesuit bimonthly journal in Italian, aimed at commenting on the issues of the day, appealed to the pope. In the past, the Church had no need for a publication directed at the laity, but now, with the spread of a critical popular press, there was need for a means of combating liberal propaganda and showing how proper Christian ideas were to be applied. Sweeping aside the
protests of the head of the Jesuit order, who argued that the Jesuits’ constitution forbade them from publishing a political journal, Pius IX gave Father Curci his enthusiastic support, and the first issue of
Civiltà Cattolica
was published in 1850. It soon became the unofficial organ of the Holy See.
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The Pope, a man of great religious faith, believed that the defeat of the Roman rebels by the French troops had been the work of God, a matter of divine retribution. He realized his own failings as an executive and a diplomat and so, in reestablishing his rule over the Papal States, turned to a man whose political and administrative abilities he had recently come to rely on, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli. Indeed, for many residents of the Papal States, who refused to see in the oppressive return of absolutist rule the guiding hand of their beloved Pope, it was Antonelli—named secretary of state by Pius IX while they were in exile in Gaeta in 1849—who was blamed.

Antonelli’s twenty-seven-year term of office was almost as remarkable as that of the Pope himself. It was marked not only by controversy over his policies, but—unlike the Pope, who might be regarded as irascible but certainly not corruptible—by the constant buzz of scandal that hung over him. That Cardinal Antonelli was able to hold on to power so long was seen by many—not only the masses of faithful unwilling to doubt the Pope’s benevolence, but fellow cardinals as well—as evidence that the crafty and unscrupulous secretary of state had hoodwinked the credulous pope.

Giacomo Antonelli was born in 1806 to a wealthy family living in the southernmost part of the Papal States, near the border with the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His father had made his fortune when Giacomo was a child, administering the properties of a large local landowner who, having been captured by brigands in 1807 and freed only after payment of a prodigious ransom, had taken a strong dislike to his old neighborhood and moved to Rome. Domenico Antonelli had five sons and three daughters. While his older sons were groomed to help him run the business, Giacomo was prepared for a clerical career. He had a meteoric rise in the Church hierarchy and was a cardinal by age forty. Yet Antonelli never became a priest. He was one of the last of a breed, men of wealthy or noble families who entered upon an ecclesiastical career predestined for high diplomatic office, but had little inclination for and little interest in religious or pastoral duties and were not required to be ordained as priests.
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The experiences of 1848–49 had a traumatic effect on Antonelli, as also on the Pope, and he concluded that papal rule could survive only if absolutist methods were reimposed and a close alliance was built with Austria, whose military forces would guarantee stability. Fending off a legion of critics, Antonelli succeeded in centralizing in his own hands all power over the Papal States’ domestic administration and its diplomatic relations, preventing other government ministers from making decisions without his approval.

Together, Pius IX and his secretary of state were able to rebuild the papal regime. Unrest gradually died down, assassination attempts against Church officials became less common, and economic conditions began to improve. The period from 1851 to 1857 saw the Pope regain some of his lost popularity, and the cult of the saintly, good-humored leader once more gained ground.

Pius IX could show that he was made of stern stuff when he thought firmness was required. One day in June 1855, for example, as Cardinal Antonelli was descending the steps of the Vatican Palace, he noticed a young man waiting nervously on a landing. When he saw the man reach into his shirt, the Cardinal raced back up the stairs. The flustered would-be assassin, brandishing a large carving fork, was subdued by the papal police before he could reach his target. Identified as Antonio De Felici, a 35-year-old Roman hatmaker, he was already known to authorities as a frequenter of republican and Carbonari circles. De Felici was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Although the Secretary of State asked that the sentence be commuted to life in prison, the Pope decided that an example should be made of him, and on July 10 De Felici was decapitated.
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The hatred inspired by Antonelli is nicely captured by a secret report of Britain’s representative at the Vatican, Odo Russell, written in January 1860. Russell noted that, despite Antonelli’s responsibilities as head of Vatican diplomacy, the Cardinal had never traveled outside Italy and was only “very slightly acquainted with the affairs of other countries.” But what he lacked in education, Russell observed, he more than made up for by “laborious habits, a logical mind, insinuating manners, animated conversation and the experience of diplomatic drawing rooms.” Russell concluded with the observation that the Cardinal “has complete control over the amiable but weak mind of Pius IX.”

According to the British diplomat, ever since Antonelli had returned with the Pope from exile in Gaeta, “he has been the object of general, bitter and unceasing hatred.… His youth irritates the venerable members of the Sacred College, his low origin annoys the patrician families, his firmness exasperates the liberal party, his commanding position excites the envy of all.” In addition, tales of his love of money and his nepotistic ways were rampant. He had arranged for his brother to become head of the Pontifical Bank, and together, the British envoy reported, the two “have largely increased their private fortunes.”
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Recent historians have been no kinder to the Secretary of State. Typical are the comments of J. Derek Holmes, who paints an appalling picture: “Antonelli lacked both principles and intelligence … while what he lacked in political or theological insight, he made up for in his acquisitive instincts and luxurious living. A greedy man, Antonelli used his position to accumulate a large personal fortune for himself and his relations.” Nor was this all, for
Cardinal Antonelli was also widely rumored to keep a mistress. Following his death, in a case deeply embarrassing to the embattled Church, a woman filed suit in Italian court claiming, as Antonelli’s illegitimate daughter, a portion of his substantial estate.
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The fact that he left none of his fortune to the Church, not even to any of the religious orders for which he served as cardinal protector, only reinforced the popular view of his greed and impiety.
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The similarities between the common view of the time in Rome, which contrasted the good pope with the wicked secretary of state, and the view that subsequent historians have embraced, are striking. Holmes portrays a devout and deeply moral pope, who, although he had his weaknesses, including a hot temper, is described as “a man of deep and genuine piety who had a quiet confidence in God.” Spending much time each day in prayer, he was “an attractive person, sympathetic and charming, intelligent and witty.” As an example of the last-mentioned trait, Holmes cites the Pope’s encounter with a group of Anglican clergymen at which he blessed them—in a variation on the blessing over incense at the Holy Mass—with the words: “May you be blessed by Him in whose honour you shall be burnt.”
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A less generous Italian historian from earlier in the twentieth century attributed the Pope’s gentle, benevolent image to the persistent trembling of his lip, due to his epilepsy, which caused a sweet smile to flash regularly across his face. However, by contrast with this historian’s portrait of Antonelli, his view of the Pope was positively adulatory. The Secretary of State, he wrote, was “ugly in appearance, but frank … he never said mass, nor took confession. He was cold, egoistical, a schemer.”
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The construction of the Cardinal as demon and the Pope as saint, while having a long pedigree, obscures more than it reveals about the two men and the historical roles they played. Even historians favorably disposed toward the Pope record some of his less attractive qualities. Roger Aubert, who has written something like an official Church biography of the Pontiff, characterizes Pius IX as, above all else, emotional and excitable, often betrayed by a tendency toward irritability and rapid mood swings. Sensitive to anything he took to be a slight, he was known for frightening visitors with angry outbursts, uttering words he would later regret. In recent years, one of the charges that proponents of his sainthood have had to face was Pius IX’s tendency to ridicule people when he was annoyed with them, displaying a caustic wit that sometimes left a poor impression of the Holy Father.
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All that said, Aubert paints the picture of a firm and principled champion of the Church. Pius IX’s only ambition, his biographer argues, was to serve the Church, a commitment rooted in a deep and unshakable faith. With his melodious voice, his kind smile, and his willingness to receive a long line of visitors day after day, giving each his complete attention, the Pope won a reputation
as a deeply religious and caring man. Although he could be indecisive in dealing with affairs of state, when his role as pastor was at stake and when he saw Church dogma under attack—factors both very much at issue in the Mortara case—he was resolute and unbending.
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At the other end of the spectrum, August Hasler, a heterodox Swiss priest and scholar—in a more recent study of how, under Pius IX’s direction, the doctrine of papal infallibility came to be officially established—gives short shrift to the idea of the Pope’s amiable personality and rock-hard faith. Hasler paints an unflattering picture of a credulous, superstitious, and mean-spirited bigot. Nor does Hasler have kind words to say about the Pontiff’s intelligence. He cites a letter written by Mastai-Ferretti to Pope Leo XII in which the future pope, then aged 33, complains that owing to his earlier bouts with epilepsy, he “had a very weak memory and could not concentrate on a subject for any length of time without having worry about his ideas getting terribly confused.” Pius IX, Hasler maintains, was considered by those who knew him to be “impressionable, capricious, impulsive, and unpredictable.”
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Whichever we choose, it is clear that Cardinal Antonelli’s ability to get the Pope to do what he wanted had its limits. While much of papal administration and diplomacy held no interest for Pius IX, and in those arenas he gave his trusted secretary of state a free hand to do what he thought best, in matters that did interest him he had a strong will of his own. Many of the actions for which Pius IX is today remembered, and revered, by the Church are products of his uncompromising stand on matters of doctrine: the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception of Mary as dogma in 1854 and the First Vatican Council, with its proclamation of papal infallibility, in 1870 stand out especially. In the latter case, Antonelli had clear misgivings, accurately predicting the diplomatic damage that would be done throughout Europe by the pronouncement. Pius IX dismissed these concerns with the comment: “I have the Blessed Virgin on my side.”
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The Pope continued to see himself as benevolently disposed toward the Jews, but it was a benevolence necessarily qualified by his strong belief in the superiority of Christianity, in the divine punishment meted out to the Jews for their historical role in the killing of Christ, and in the perniciousness of the Jews’ own religious beliefs and practices. Events of 1848–49 only strengthened Pius IX’s opposition to the idea of freedom of religion. He was committed to the principle of the Catholic state, one in which any other religion had to be viewed with suspicion and closely regulated, if not banned.
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This principle extended not only to the Jews but to other Christian denominations as well. Indeed, the Pope was more favorably inclined toward the Jews, who represented no threat to the Holy Church, than toward the Protestants, who did. To the complaints of those who said that the Jews were poorly treated in the
Papal States, the Pope and his defenders could argue that, on the contrary, they were accorded privileged treatment, allowed to have their own synagogues and practice their religion undisturbed. By contrast, Protestants were not permitted such freedoms, and Rome itself had no real Protestant church, other than a converted granary outside town used by diplomatic personnel and other foreigners. Papal police stood guard at its doors to ensure that no native went inside.
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