Part 28 (1/2)
The private life of Roderigo had been a perpetual disgrace to his ecclesiastical functions. In the Papal History by Dr. Beggi (edition 1862, pages 553-556) we are told that this cardinal was at one time sovereign regent of Rome, that he had a ferocious and indomitable ambition, with such a perverse spirit fomented by debauchery, luxury, and riches, that in the contempt of any pretense of virtue, he lived publicly with a barefaced concubine named Rosa Vennozza, by whom he had many children. After his election to the chair of St. Peter, he created his eldest son Duke of Candia. Caesar Borgia was the second son; Lucretia Borgia was of the same stock, and the eldest of several daughters whom he had by other mistresses.
On the death of Innocent VIII., Cardinal Roderigo Borgia, being the most powerful in authority and wealth, with cunning artifices, and corrupt promises to the Roman barons and the most influential cardinals--such as the Sforzas, the Orsini, the Riarii, and others, ascended the papal chair under the t.i.tle of Alexander VI.
NOTE 2.
A better ill.u.s.tration of the manner in which the Church of Rome applies her patronage of the fine arts to the inculcation of her doctrines and the increase of her power, can hardly be found than among the frescoes of the Campo Santo, Pisa. Here we have represented the most ghastly cartoons of death, judgment, purgatory, and h.e.l.l; we behold angels and devils fighting for the souls of the departed, snakes devouring, fiends scorching, red-hot hooks tearing their flesh. Those on earth can, so say the priests, rescue their unfortunate relatives from this melancholy position by giving donations to their spiritual fathers, who will then pray for their escape. We read in the New Testament that the rich enter heaven with difficulty, but it is they, according to the Church of Rome, who enter easily, whilst the poor are virtually excluded.
NOTE 3.
In foreign discussions on the papal question it is always a.s.sumed as an undisputed fact that the maintenance of the papal court at Rome is, in a material point of view, an immense advantage to the city, whatever it may be in a moral one. Now my own observations have led me to doubt the correctness of this a.s.sumption. If the Pope were removed from Rome, or if a lay government were established--the two hypotheses are practically identical--the number of the clergy would undoubtedly be much diminished, a large number of the convents and clerical endowments would be suppressed, and the present generation of priests would be heavy sufferers. This result is inevitable. Under no free government would or could a city of 170,000 inhabitants support 10,000 unproductive persons out of the common funds--for this is substantially the case in Rome at the present day. Every sixteen lay citizens--men, women, and children--support out of their labor a priest between them. The papal question with the Roman priesthood is thus a question of daily bread, and it is surely no want of charity to suppose that the material aspect influences their minds quite as much as the spiritual. It is, however, a Protestant delusion that the priests of Rome live upon the fat of the land. What fat there is is certainly theirs. It is one of the mysteries of Rome how the hundreds of priests who swarm about the streets manage to live. The clue to the mystery is to be found inside the churches. In every church--and there arty 866 of them--some score or two of ma.s.ses are said daily at the different altars. The pay for performing a ma.s.s varies from sixpence to five s.h.i.+llings. The good ma.s.ses--those paid for by private persons for the souls of their relatives--are naturally reserved for the priests connected with a particular church; while the poor ones are given to any priest who happens to apply for them. The n.o.bility, as a body, are sure to be the supporters of an established order of things; their interests, too, are very much mixed up with those of the papacy. There is not a single n.o.ble Roman family that has not one or more of its members among the higher ranks of the priesthood. And in a considerable degree their distinctions, such as they are, and their temporal prospects, are bound up with the popedom. Moreover, in this rank of the social scale the private and personal influence of the priests through the women of the family is very powerful. The more active, however, and ambitious amongst the aristocracy feel deeply the exclusion from public life, the absence from any opening for ambition, and the gradual impoverishment of their property, which are the necessary evils of an absolute ecclesiastical government.--_Dicey's ”Rome in 1860_.”
NOTE 4.
Many of our readers may have only an indistinct idea of the causes which led to the siege of Rome in 1849; and to understand it we must turn for a moment to the history of France. The revolution of 1848, which dethroned Louis Philippe and the house of Orleans, and established a republican government in France, was the signal for a general revolutionary movement throughout Europe. The Fifth Article of the new French Const.i.tution stated, ”The French Republic respects foreign nationalities. She intends to cause her own to be respected. She will never undertake any sin for the purpose of conquest, and will never employ her arms against the liberty of any people.” Prince Louis Napoleon was elected a member of the Chambers. He had fought for the Italian liberty in the year 1831, when the Bolognese revolution broke out. Louis Napoleon had taken an active part in the campaign, and, aided by General Sercognani, defeated the Papal forces in several places.
His success was of short duration. He was deprived of his command, and banished from Italy, and only escaped the Austrian soldiers by a.s.suming the disguise of a servant.* When the prince landed in France from England, where he had resided several years, he caused a proclamation to be posted on the walls of Boulogne, from which we extract the following:--
”I have come to respond to the appeal which you have made to my patriotism. The mission which you impose on me is a glorious one, and I shall know how to fulfill it. Full of grat.i.tude for the affection you manifest towards me, I bring you my whole life, my whole soul.
”Brothers and citizens, it is not a pretender whom you receive into your midst. I have not meditated in exile to no purpose. A pretender is a calamity. I shall never be ungrateful, never a malefactor. It is as a sincere and ardent Democratic Reformer that I come before you. I call to witness the mighty shade of the man of the age, as I solemnly make these promises:-
”I will be, as I always have been, the child of France.
”In every Frenchman I shall always see a brother.
”The rights of everyone shall be my rights.
”The Democratic Republic shall be the object of my wors.h.i.+p. I will be its priest.
”Never will I seek to clothe myself in the imperial purple.
”Let my heart be withered within my breast on the day when I forget what I owe to you and to France.
”Let my lips be ever closed if I ever p.r.o.nounce a word, a blasphemy, against the Republican sovereignty of the French people.
”Let me be accursed on the day when I allow the propagation, under cover of my name, of doctrines contrary to the democratic principle which ought to direct the government of the Republic.
* See ”Vicissitudes of Families,” by Sir Bernard Burke, pp.
294, 395. See also ”The Autobiography of an Italian Rebel,”
by Riccalde, from p. 5.
”Let me be condemned to the pillory on the day when, a criminal and a traitor, I shall dare to lay a sacrilegious hand on the rights of the people--whether by fraud, with its consent, or by force and violence against it.”--See Courier de la Sarthe.
And on December 2d, 1848, he addressed the following letter to the Editor of the Const.i.tutionnel:-
”Monsieur,--Sachant qu'on a remarque mon absence au vote pour l'expedition de Civita Vecchia, je crois devoir declarer, que bien que resolu a appuyer toutes les dispositions propres a garantir la liberte et l'autorite du Souverain Pontife, je n'ai pu neanmoins approuver, par mon vote, unie demonstration militaire qui me semblait perilleuse, meme pour les interets sacres que Ton veut proteger, et faite pour compromettre la paix europeene.
(Signe) ”L. N. Bonaparte.”
It must also be borne in mind that the Emperor Napoleon, his uncle, had created his own son King of Rome, and had detained the Pope a prisoner in France; when, therefore, Prince Louis Napoleon was elected President of the French Republic, it was universally supposed that he would rejoice at the formation of a sister Republic in the Roman States. The Roman Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly elected by universal suffrage voted by one hundred and forty-three against five votes for the perpetual abolition of the temporal government of the Pope.
On the 18th of April, 1849, the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly voted that a manifesto should be addressed to the Governments and Parliaments of England and France. In this doc.u.ment it was stated, ”That the Roman people had a right to give themselves the form of government which pleased them; that they had sanctioned the independence and free exercise of the spiritual authority of the Pope; and that they trusted that England and France would not a.s.sist in restoring a government irreconcilable by its nature with liberty and civilization, and morally dest.i.tute of all authority for many years past, and materially so during the previous five months.”