Prisoner of the Vatican (11 page)

For Lanza and his colleagues, the pope's refusal to accept the Leonine city was a great embarrassment. The Italian diplomatic corps had trumpeted the king's offer to governments throughout Europe as evidence that king and pope could coexist peacefully. Papal refusal raised the specter of a battle to the death for Rome.

Meanwhile, in keeping with the procedures it had followed in all the other lands annexed to the Savoyard monarchy, the government organized a popular plebiscite so that the Romans could vote on joining the Kingdom of Italy. It was crucial to show the world that the people of Rome were eager to be part of Italy.

At the time, Rome had a population of about 240,000, divided into fourteen
rioni,
or districts, and further divided into fifty-four parishes. Most Romans were illiterate and few spoke Italian, but in this respect they were no different from most Italians.
⁵

As the October 2 date neared, the residents of Borgo, the
rione
in the middle of the Leonine city, were growing increasingly restive. They, too, they insisted, were part of Rome and the new Italian state, and they would never submit to a continued papal theocracy. They too wanted to cast their votes in the plebiscite, thereby posing a ticklish problem for the government. If they voted and overwhelmingly favored becoming part of Italy, how could they be left behind?

Albert Blanc, the secretary-general of the Italian Foreign Ministry, proposed a solution in a September 30 report to Visconti. The government, he urged, should expropriate all the land and buildings in Borgo, compensating their owners by using the proceeds from the sale of Church property seized elsewhere in Rome. The government should then give all of Borgo to the Holy See; any resident who preferred to live under Italian jurisdiction could move across the river. Such a plan would give the Holy See full sovereignty over a city that was large enough to accommodate 40,000 people and that could easily house all of the religious orders that were being evicted from their properties in other parts of the Roman provinces.
⁶

The prime minister, eager to see this plan put into effect, telegraphed Cadorna the next day, the day before the plebiscite, with a warning: "It is important that the Government and the municipality take no action during the plebiscite that prejudices the question of the Leonine city, which must be considered as a Pontifical territory." The plebiscite, Lanza instructed, was not to be held in Borgo, and no political demonstration of any kind was to be allowed there.

Shortly before 2
A.M.
on the eve of the plebiscite, Blanc telegraphed Visconti to reassure him: "All measures have been taken to prevent anything that might offend the pope. No ballot boxes will be located in the Papal City."
⁷

But, apparently unknown to Blanc, earlier that same evening Cadorna had been besieged by the residents of Borgo, irate that they were to be prevented from voting. The general came up with a compromise. While, by government order, no votes could be cast in Borgo, a separate ballot box reserved for residents of the papal territory would be set up on the Campidoglio, the site of Rome's municipal government, for those who wanted to vote.

October 2 was a day of celebration in Rome. Bursting with patriotic fervor, people draped tapestries from their windows and pasted
Si
on their hats and on the ribbons that hung from their buttonholes. At the end of the day, to the noisy delight of those congregated at the city capital for the counting of the vote, a large delegation of Borgo's residents arrived wearing hats with
Si
on them. In their ballot box were the 1,566 Borgo votes, every one a yes.
⁸

In all, the Romans that day voted 40,785 Si, 46 No, a tally so lopsided that it offered plenty of ammunition to the pope's defenders. At the polling place, the Jesuits of
Civiltà Cattolica
reported, the man incharge offered each voter a choice between taking a card that said yes and one that said no. Those who asked for the yes ballot were greeted by the applause of the surrounding crowd. Those who dared to ask for the no faced jeers and whistles.
⁹
While the vote may have been far from an accurate reflection of opinion in Rome, there is no doubt that on that day the vast majority of the Roman population was truly excited, happy to be released from papal rule and eager to be part of the new Italian state.

Blanc, in reporting the results, told Visconti that he did not know how Borgo's residents could be forced to live under papal rule. "But," he added, not without some contradiction, "this does not detract from the idea that leaving the Leonine city to the Pope remains practical, advantageous, and inevitable."
¹⁰

A few days later, Blanc formulated what became the final government proposal for trying to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable: the ceding of the Leonine city to the pope while allowing its population to be citizens of Italy. In a letter to Visconti, Blanc sketched out the new plan. The pope would have sovereignty over the Leonine city. Not only would he enjoy immunity from the Italian government, but so too would the Vatican palaces and all the headquarters of the Church hierarchy and members of the Vatican offices, the cardinals and bishops, and the central offices of the religious orders. The Holy See would have the right to expropriate any other property in the Leonine city that it deemed desirable for ecclesiastical use. The Italian government would provide a large annual subsidy to the Holy See to cover the expenses of all of its offices, in addition to the sum annually assigned to the pope himself. At the same time, the inhabitants of the Leonine city would enjoy the civil and political rights of Italian citizens—with certain exceptions in keeping with the pope's sovereignty. No newspaper, book, pamphlet, or other written material could be sold or posted without papal approval, nor would any theatrical performance, public speech, demonstration, or other such public activity be allowed without pontifical authorization. All artisans and professionals would require Vatican approval in order to conduct business there.
¹¹

Plans so complicated had no chance of being put into practice unless the pope was willing to negotiate. And, as Antonelli made clear in a letter he sent on October 10 to the papal nuncio in Vienna, Pius was in no mood for compromise.

"The Holy Father," Antonelli wrote, "knowing he has right on his side and resolved to withstand all hardships in order to carry out His duties and live up to the pledge that He took, will never lower himself by entering into any dealings with the usurpers and will never enter into any negotiation that is not directed at restoring the fullness of His dominions and His Sovereign rights." The whole Catholic world should know with absolute certainty, Antonelli added, "that He will not yield, regardless of what the consequences may be." Although the king of Florence—as Antonelli called Victor Emmanuel II—wanted to give the Leonine city to the Holy Father, he wrote, "such a proposal, like any other of its kind, is not going to be and will never be accepted."
¹²

The likelihood that Pius could be brought around to a realistic assessment of the new political situation was never very great, and hopes in the Italian cabinet were further diminished by reports that the trauma of losing Rome had increased the pontiff's otherworldly proclivities. On October 12, Blanc sent Visconti a disturbing report: "For some time the pope has been trying to bring about a miracle, during one of those times when he has the sensation of inexhaustible vitality, which he takes to be a visitation of the Holy Spirit." The pope had recently raised his arms and commanded a cripple: "Get up and walk." When the poor man collapsed in a failed effort, the Vatican had the episode hushed up.
¹³

Eager to show the other European powers its great respect for the pope, the government decided to appoint Alfonso La Marmora, an army general and former prime minister, in charge of Rome. Widely known in European diplomatic circles as a prudent and conservative man eager to bring about the conciliation of church and state, close to the king and from an aristocratic family of Turin, La Marmora was viewed with disdain by the left, who angrily protested his appointment.
¹⁴

If Lanza had any hopes that La Marmora's reputation as a friend of the Church would open up new possibilities for accord, they were soon dashed. On his arrival in Rome, La Marmora asked to be received at the Vatican so that he could pay homage to the pontiff. Neither Pius nor Antonelli would see him. Lanza tried to console the general: "Their resentment against the King's Government is still too fresh for them to want to establish a relationship immediately with the person who represents this Government." Yet Lanza expressed the wish that as time passed Pius would bow to the new reality.
¹⁵

La Marmora was quickly besieged by the residents of Borgo. A large, noisy delegation protested that they did not want to be separated from the rest of the city and would not remain subjects of the pope. They were to be disappointed. "As you can imagine," La Marmora reported to Lanza, "I was not moved, and rejecting their criticisms, their assertions, and their suspicions, I told them that the Government had already done more for the Romans than I had ever believed possible. As for what would happen, it was necessary to give the situation enough time and to observe the greatest prudence, otherwise we all ran the grave risk of ruining everything." La Marmora ended his letter with a plea to Lanza that a final decision on the fate of the Leonine city be made soon.
¹⁶

The prime minister was fast losing hope. Pius, he was now convinced, would never recognize the legitimacy of the Italian state that had taken his lands. Oddly, less than two weeks after Lanza had tried to reassure the ruffled La Marmora that the pope would eventually come around, he wrote to him: "I do not believe, and I never believed in conciliation. If I were in the pope's or Antonelli's shoes, I would find it odd and personally insulting that someone who took something so large from me which I (let's leave aside whether rightly or wrongly) highly valued should come and ask me for conciliation without returning all or at least part of what he had taken from me. And so if I wanted to do to the pope what I would want done to me under similar circumstances, I would not torment him with proposals for a conciliation that is impossible."

Visconti, the cabinet's most influential champion of conciliation, had by the same time also given up hope. In a letter to his brother on October 25, he wrote that the only thing that could now be done was to impress on the foreign powers how great an effort the government was making to ensure the Holy See's independence. The people of Rome, he added, were not helping these efforts. "They are distrustful, impatient; they want to see the king come to Rome right away, the convents and monasteries abolished immediately, the capital moved there without delay."
¹⁷

In the Vatican, the mood was dark. Gregorovius, an eyewitness, described the scene: "The cardinals never show themselves, or if they drive out, their carriages bear no marks of distinction; all their pomp and magnificence have ended in smoke. Only solitary priests slink through the streets, timid and shadowlike." Yet Gregorovius did not spare the government his barbs. When the pope on November 1 issued an order of excommunication against the usurpers of his realm, Gregorovius reported, "[T]he Government was petty-minded enough to confiscate the newspapers which printed it."
¹⁸

As events unfolded in Rome, the rest of the world looked on, some with glee, others with horror. Disruptions caused by the Italian invasion, along with the continuing chaos in western Europe produced by the Prussian assault on Paris, meant that the initial reports about the pope's fate were slow in coming. In a letter sent on September 26, the papal nuncio in Munich complained that the only news received to date came from the Italian government, giving a one-sided account of the army's triumphal entrance into the Holy City. "Everyone is anxiously and fearfully asking," the nuncio wrote, "about the state of the Holy Father and his precious health." But they had other questions as well: "What will happen to the cardinals and the clergy?" That a Catholic king like Victor Emmanuel could have committed such an outrage was incredible, the nuncio fumed, and would "forever stain his name in infamy before the tribunal of history." Attached to this message was a petition signed by German princes, barons, counts, and lawyers denouncing the taking of Rome and the ending of Pius IX's temporal power.
¹⁹

The papal nuncio to the Netherlands was similarly agitated. On September 27 he sent Antonelli a telegram in numeric code, reporting that the news that had reached Holland told of the Romans'joyous reaction to the arrival of the Italian troops. He was trying to do everything he could to drum up diplomatic support, but the Dutch were more concerned about the chaotic situation in France and, in any case, were inclined to accept the taking of Rome as a fait accompli. The nuncio urgently sought instructions on how best to spur the bishops and Catholic faithful to effective action.
²⁰

Within a few days of his retreat from the Quirinal Palace, the site of his former offices and now in the midst of a hostile Rome, Antonelli began sending a series of dispatches to his nuncios describing the pope's parlous position and soliciting the help of friendly governments. On September 26 he wrote to his nuncio in Vienna. What was most intolerable for the pope, wrote Antonelli, was that, robbed of his temporal kingdom, he could no longer fulfill his obligations as God's Vicar on earth. The government controlled all means of communication, his cardinals lived under threat, and sacrilegious books in great number were being publicly sold on the streets of Rome. Yet the pope could not protest against any of these outrages for fear that he would expose his sacred person and the clergy as a whole to threats and worse. Under these conditions, concluded Antonelli, it was crucial for the nuncio to impress on the Austrian foreign minister and on the emperor himself the need to champion the pope's course.
²¹