Later History

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

THE preceding chapter, which was the last that Mr. Abbott wrote, records the seizure of Rome by the Italian army and the overthrow of the temporal power of the pope. The call for a new edition of the work, after the lapse of more than ten years, during which period the author died, devolves upon another the duty of preparing a new chapter, bringing the history down to a later date.

Rome was entered by the Italian army in September, 1870 ; but it did not practically become the capital of Italy till the beginning of July, 1871. Victor Emanuel, when he received at Florence the deputation sent to inform him of the adoption of the plebiscitum by which the people of Rome declared it to be their will that the city should become the seat of the Government of United Italy, was deeply moved. " At last," he said, II our arduous task is accomplished, and our country is reconstructed. The name of Rome, which is the grandest name uttered by the mouths of men, is joined with the name of Italy, the name which is dearest to my heart." He also took occasion to proclaim his loyalty to the Church of Rome. " As a king and as a Catholic," he said, " while I here proclaim the unity of Italy, I remain constant to my resolve to guarantee the liberty of the Church and the independence of the Supreme Pontiff." The declaration was, no doubt, made in good faith ; but whether or not it has been fulfilled is a controverted question.

Before entering the Eternal City in state, the king sent a private message to the pope, expressing his personal attachment to the Church and his devotion to the Holy See. Gen. Viale was deputed to present himself at the Vatican, and, in the name of the king, to congratulate the pope upon having held his pontificate beyond the space of a quarter of a century, allotted by legend to St. Peter. The pope, how-ever, refused to receive the visit of the envoy ; and other similar overtures from the Quirinal to the Vatican were treated in the same way. That this was a great disappointment to the king there can be no doubt ; for he was exceedingly anxious to be reconciled to the papacy, and for that purpose prepared to make almost any sacrifice consistent with the welfare of United Italy. In defying the anger of the pope, rather than jeopardize his country and his throne, he evinced a high degree of courage.

The kingdom has enjoyed uninterrupted peace during the last twelve years. Its relations with foreign powers have presented, from time to time, very embarrassing questions, requiring skillful diplomacy on the part of the king and his ministers ; but every danger from this source was safely passed. Questions of internal administration have been even more perplexing. The inexperience of the Italians in constitutional government, the conflicts arising from local and personal interests, the ignorance and indifference of large masses of the people degraded by long submission to despotic authority, the conspiracies and plots engendered by an unwise and impatient radicalism that demanded a harvest while yet the seed had not had time to germinate, and the presence of a wily and powerful sacerdotalism resting upon centuries of prejudice and superstition, — these and other causes have made the task of governing United Italy one of great and peculiar embarrassment.

Victor Emanuel, it must in all fairness be conceded, bore himself well in the midst of all these difficulties, to the end of his career ; and his successor has followed his example. It is doubtful if the king felt any strong attachment to constitutional government in itself considered ; but his common sense enabled him to see, that, as Italy could only have achieved independence and unity under free institutions, so, if his throne was to endure, the constitutional character of the government must be maintained. Though he was a man of strong opinions, he chose his ministers in accordance with the votes of Parliament, and loyally sup-ported the policy recommended by them. If constitutional government is now well established in the Peninsula, as it certainly seems to be, the credit for this result is due to the wise moderation and firmness of Victor Emanuel.

The footing on which the dethroned pontiff is allowed to reside at the Vatican, and to exercise his spiritual authority unhindered and under the protection of the government, was defined in the bill of " Papal Guarantys," enacted by Parliament in May, 1871. The person of the pope is therein declared to be " sacred and inviolable," and offenses against him are punishable in the same manner as offenses against the king. It is decreed that he shall be received by the civil authorities with royal honors, and given the same rights of precedence that are accorded to him and his representatives in other Catholic countries. The law allows him as many guards as he thinks necessary to protect his person and pal-ace. His annual allowance from the government was fixed at 3,225,000 lire, free from all rates and taxes. He was to remain in possession of the Vatican, the Lateran, and Castel-Gondolfo, with all their outbuildings, furniture, etc. ; and both the libraries and picture-galleries contained in them were to be inalienable. No official or other government agent was to be allowed to enter any of the papal palaces, even in the discharge of his public duty, without the pope's permission ; and the same rule was to apply to buildings where a conclave or council should be assembled. The pope was to be left free to correspond with the bishops and the whole of the Catholic world without interference on the part of the Italian Government. He was to have postal and telegraphic service of his own for each of his palaces ; and all the papal seminaries, academies, universities, and colleges in Rome and the suburban dioceses were to be solely under his control. The government relinquished the privilege it had previously enjoyed of presenting and nominating persons to offices or benefices in the Church, on the condition that Italian subjects only should be appointed ; and the bishops were exempted from taking the oath of allegiance to the king.

These conditions show that the government meant to be conciliatory toward the Church in all save the denial to it of temporal power. Victor Emanuel, in opening the first parliament held in Rome, manifested a conciliatory spirit. " The work to which," he said, " we have consecrated our life, is completed : after long expiatory trials, Italy is restored to herself and to Rome. Here, where our people, after the dispersion of many centuries, finds itself for the first time assembled in the majesty of its representatives ; here, where we recognize the country of our thoughts, — every thing speaks to us of greatness, but every thing at the same time reminds us of our duties : we shall not forget them in the joys of this day. Regenerated by liberty, we shall seek in liberty and order the secret of strength, and a reconciliation between the Church and the State. Having recognized the absolute independence of the spiritual authority, we may be certain that Rome, as the capital of Italy, will continue to be the peaceful and respected seat of the pontificate."

At the very hour when Victor Emanuel was uttering these words in the presence of the representatives of the people of Italy, the pope, addressing his partisans, spoke in a far different strain. In the words of his official organ, " he condescended to speak of that conciliation blated forth by the impious, who had even ventured to foreshadow it by allusive pictures, — that so-called conciliation by which the enemies of God hope to conquer our noble resistance and disarm our holier rights ; and here, raising his voice, he protested solemnly that no ' conciliation' would ever be possible between Christ and Belial, between light and darkness, between truth and falsehood : then, with eyes and arms uplifted to heaven, he prayed the Omnipotent to sustain the force of his vicar in the hard struggle, and fortify by divine aid his constancy, offering to sacrifice his life sooner than yield to the insane devices of triumphant iniquity."

" What," he asked on another occasion, " are certain governments? They are like a pyramid, of which the apex is dependent on a cabinet, which is dependent on an assembly, which in its turn is dependent on a thousand demons who have chosen it. All are slaves of sin : the angel of God pursues them, and threatens them with a naked sword."

On a subsequent occasion, Pius IX., addressing the College of Cardinals, in reference to the action of the government in taking possession of the convents, repudiated every thought of a conciliation with the Italian Kingdom. In November, 1873, in an encyclical letter, he declared that Rome had " passed under the sway of men who despise law, who are enemies of religion, who confound all things, human and divine." He insisted that the especial object of the Italian Government was the subversion of the pontifical authority, and the destruction, if possible, of the Catholic religion itself.

In May, 1873, a bill was passed by the Chambers, and accepted by the Senate without modification, in regard to the religious corporations of Rome and the former Papal States.

The government was anxious to avoid an open breach between itself and the papacy. The minister for foreign affairs, in introducing the bill, urged that Italy must recognize the cosmopolitan character of the pope's spiritual government, and must leave him the necessary machinery of his rule. If the heads of the Clerical party did not find this machinery, they would be able to show that they had a distinct grievance, and had been violently prevented from doing in the sphere of spiritual affairs what the interests of the Church required. This would give them an advantage in their war-fare against the new order of things. The party of the Left was sternly opposed to every concession, insisting that the ministers should cause all traces of theocratic rule to vanish. The bill provided in general for the application to Rome itself of the statutes by which convent property throughout the rest of Italy had already been subjected to the laws of mortmain, and taken by the State for purposes of charitable and educational endowment. Special exception was made, however, on behalf of the establishments belonging to the heads of orders, generals, and superiors of religious associations, having branches in foreign countries. It was felt that to cut off these generalships would inflict a blow at the pope, which his peculiar position at Rome rendered it decent and merciful and also politic to avoid. The government, there-fore, conceived that these " generals " should receive a pension from the State as the pope received his, and that they should be allowed to retain at least a few apartments in the houses where they had so long had their residences. This proposition was sternly opposed, not only by the party of the Left, but by some of the supporters of the government : and eventually a compromise was effected, by which it was settled that the " generals " should receive a pension from the State, amounting, for the whole of them, to four hundred thousand francs yearly, and that they should continue to occupy part of their present residences ; but this provision was restricted in its application to the present " heads " during their life-time and their continuance in office. The bill passed in the Chambers by a very large majority ; and in the Senate not a single protest was made against it, though the measure was denounced at the Vatican . as a spoliation and a sacrilege. On the day that the bill passed the Senate, the pope, in an address to the College of Cardinals, protested against it as an iniquity, and also against the previous occupation of the Papal States, and repudiated every thought of a reconciliation with the Italian Kingdom. A few months later, the government began to enforce the law with firmness, but in a way to give as little offense as possible to the representatives of the Church.

In 1874 the Parliament undertook to provide for the elementary instruction of the young. The Church regarded this as an invasion of her special prerogative. The great difficulty was, to dispose of the religious question as connected with the schools. It was proposed that the State should assume control of public instruction, but that there should be unlimited freedom for private schools, and that the ecclesiastical and monastic institutions, which formerly monopolized the training of Italian youth, should be reckoned in the latter category. The State itself proclaimed neutrality in all matters connected with creed and worship, professing to give no religious instruction of any kind. This was the inevitable logic of a separation between the Church and the State : but, with a view to exonerate the schools from the charge of being Immoral and godless, it was provided, that " in all elementary schools, together with the earliest notions respecting the institutions of the State, should be taught the maxims of social justice and morality on which those institutions are founded ; and for that purpose a little manual, approved by the government upon the advice of the superior council of public instruction, shall be drawn up, and rendered obligatory throughout the kingdom." Finally, the Assembly, while approving the clause concerning the introduction of this moral manual into the public schools, threw the responsibility of dealing with the religious question upon the local authorities, the Communes to have the power of suppressing religious instruction in the schools.

On March 23, 1874, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Victor Emanuel's accession to the throne was observed as a national holiday, and celebrated with great enthusiasm. The attachment of the people to their sovereign, and their gratitude to him for his successful efforts to secure the unity of the country and to redeem it from ecclesiastical rule, found expression in a great variety of ways. In the following year there was great excitement, and, in some quarters, not a little fear of disturbance, on account of the presence of Gen. Garibaldi in Rome, he having come to take his seat in Parliament. His mode-rate and patriotic course, however, disappointed the expectations of his enemies ; and the government was strengthened by his influence. His address to the workingmen of Rome was noble, inspiring them with thoughts of peace and loyalty. In 1876, Cardinal Antonelli, the pope's secretary of state, died, and was succeeded by Cardinal Simeoni.

On the 9th of January, 1878, Victor Emanuel died. As the hour of death approached, the king was anxious to receive the last rites of the Church ; but, as he was an excommunicated person, his private chaplain hesitated to comply with his wish, and would not do so until authority was received from the Vatican. The pope himself, notwithstanding his frequent denunciations of the monarch as a sacrilegious usurper, expressed his regret that his infirmities would not permit him to visit the Quirinal on this solemn occasion. The king's death created a profound sensation in every part of the country, and elicited universal demonstrations of respect and sorrow.

The Prince of Piedmont, son of Victor Emanuel, succeeded to the throne as Humbert IV. In taking the place of his lamented father, the young monarch expressed him-self in language which was received by the people with great satisfaction. " At this moment," he said, " there is but one consolation possible ; namely, to show ourselves worthy of him, --I by following in his footsteps, you by remaining devoted to those civic virtues by the aid of which he succeeded in accomplishing the difficult task of rendering Italy great and united. I shall be mindful of the grand example he gave me of devotion to our country, love of progress, and faith in liberal institutions, which are the pride of m; house. My sole ambition will be to deserve the love of my people." The ceremonies in Rome attending the accession of the new king were imposing ; and the manifestations of popular feeling throughout the country were such as gave assurance that a great crisis had been safely passed, and that the government was strong in the affections of the people.

The death of the king was followed within a month by that of the pope. He died Feb. 7, 1878. In the Basilica of St. Peter his body lay in state for three days, during which time it was visited by crowds of people. Clad in the pontifical habiliments, it reposed upon a crimson bed, surmounted by twelve large candelabra, and so placed that the feet of the deceased pontiff extended beyond the altar-rails of the chapel in which the bed stood, so that the faithful, according to custom, might be able to kiss them.

Cardinal Pecci succeeded to the pontifical throne as Leo XIII. The coronation ceremonies took place March 3 in the Sistine Chapel. Cardinal Simeoni was succeeded by Cardinal Franchi as the pope's secretary of state. The accession of the new pope has wrought no essential change in the attitude of the Church toward the government of Italy. Leo XIII., no more than Pius TX., is willing to acquiesce in the loss of the temporal power as irrevocable. It is believed by multitudes that the former has really no expectation that that power will ever be restore it, but that he is constrained by his official advisers to persist in the plea that without it his spiritual authority can not be freely exerted. The pretense that the pontiff is a prisoner in the halls of the Vatican is still kept up as a means of exciting the sympathies of the Catholic world ; but not one of the Catholic powers betrays any disposition to interfere in his behalf, and the great body of Catholics in Italy appears to be satisfied with the separation of the Church from the State. The new pope is a little more moderate in his language than his predecessor was, but in other respects the situation is unchanged. The new pope refuses to acknowledge, even indirectly, the authority of the government. He repudiates the modern doctrines of religious toleration, and believes himself commissioned of God to forbid, in the States once under papal rule, the exercise of every form of religion except that of which he is the representative. And yet when King Humbert, in 1878, narrowly escaped death at the hand of an assassin, this same pope sent a telegram expressing his congratulations. "I pray God," he said, " for the preservation of your majesty's health."

The terror of Italy is an ignorant suffrage, combined with the indifference to public questions of a vast proportion of those who have the right to vote. For many years, voting was restricted to those who paid taxes to the amount of forty lire. in 1879 Garibaldi came to Rome to start a legal agitation for manhood suffrage. He said that those who obeyed the laws ought to make them ; that those who are obliged to fight in defense of their country should have the right to elect their representatives in Parliament. It is hard to deny such postulates as these, which are all but self-evident ; nevertheless many of the sincerest friends of universal liberty believe it would be dangerous to go so far. This question, corn bind with those of taxation and a depreciated currency, has been a source of great embarrassment to the Italian Government. At present, we believe, the tax qualification for voters is only ten francs ; but every voter must be able to read and write. How this will work remains to be seen. Pius IX. at first forbade the faithful to take any part in the elections, but he afterwards removed the restriction ; and the Church party has won some victories in the municipalities. What complications may hereafter arise from this source nobody can foresee ; but it is believed that the foundations of the government are strong, and that the restoration of the temporal power will prove to be impossible.

In the summer of 1881 the First National Exposition of the Art and Industry of United Italy took place in Milan. The results astonished, not only foreigners, but the Italians themselves. The country, under the influence of free institutions, is making rapid advances in material wealth. Agriculture and manufactures are being stimulated by the air of freedom. In short, Italy, since achieving her political independence, has set herself resolutely to achieve her emancipation from dependence upon foreign industry, and to prove, that, in natural productions and native manufactures, she intends to be second to none, and unrivalled in more than one department.

The religious changes that have taken place in Italy since the destruction of the temporal power and the introduction of tree institutions are so clearly described in a letter writ-ten by the Rev. Dr. S. F. Smith, an eminent Baptist divine, after careful observation during the year 1882, that it is deemed proper to insert it here.

" The religious condition of Italy is full of interest, and the Christian work carried on within its limits is full of promise. A careful observer has recently remarked that the whole kingdom is honey combed with evangelizing influences. With the loss of temporal power, the religion of the Roman Catholic Church has also lost much or its significance and prestige. As the pope can no longer control armies and the police, so he can no longer hold the minds of men in subjection ; and they are more and more sliding away from him. The prefect of Rome has recently said publicly that the people would rather see the imperial city laid in ashes than reduced again under the power of the Supreme Pontiff. The latter, in every recent allocution, confesses the waning of popery, and bewails his inability to resist its decline. The childish sport of the carnival in Rome, the present year, is said to have been a great falling-off from former like occasions. Some of the newspapers pronounced it a total failure. It is to be hoped the minds of the people are becoming educated to higher things. There are said to be hundreds of priests who are convinced of the error and folly of the superstitions they teach, and who would abandon the Romish Church at once if they could be assured of any method of getting a living. Many of the churches are but sparingly visited by the people. Almost the entire population devote themselves on the sabbath and on feast-days to an abundance of recreation, but the religious element of the sabbath and the saints' days is very generally held in abeyance. Many, especially of the better-educated classes, have sunk into a thoughtless indifferentism : some have fallen into atheism. A few, with tender spirit, not knowing what is truth, still blindly follow their blind leaders, endeavoring to extract consolation from the empty forms of the faith which they have inherited, and which they have been taught to accept with unthinking submission.

" Such is the field which the gospel of Protestantism and of the New Testament is entering. It is now, happily, an open field, so far as legal restrictions are concerned ; although converts to the gospel of Christ, undoubtedly, have to meet much private persecution. But the whole country is opened to evangelical effort, and at many points the word of God is taking effect. It might not be prudent to record for public information all that could be said. It is enough to know that the scriptures have found their way into thousands of families ; that hundreds of children are taught in Christian schools ; that the gospel is preached every sabbath day, openly, in many centers of population and influence ; and churches of Christ have been organized. Several of the Christian denominations are interested in the work of Italian evangelization, and have planted their banners on the ram-parts, where they propose to hold the fort till He whose right it is shall reign without a rival, and all His enemies be subdued under His feet.

" This is what I found of Protestant effort in the imperial city of Rome. The English Wesleyans ; the American Methodists ; the Southern Baptist Convention of the United States ; the English Baptists under Mr. Wall, and a second congregation where Mr. Grassi preaches to a large audience ; the American and English Episcopal congregations ; the Italian Free Church, under Gavazzi, with schools for children, and a theological seminary under a Scotch professor ; the Scotch Presbyterian Church ; and a young ladies' school of more than a hundred pupils,—constitute the advanced guard of the army of the Lord of hosts, going forth to the conquest of this ancient and classic land. To these are to be added various schools, mothers' meetings, weekly conferences and lectures, hospital work, beggars' meetings and other institutions, Bible-readers, colporteurs, etc. Mr. Wall has a printing-office in connection with his work, and is able to sell Italian Testaments, well printed and bound, for the sum of six cents. I found Bibles and Testaments among the books for sale by the street-peddlers. He has a church in Rome of more than a hundred converted Italians, men and women, and frequent baptisms."