Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

in 1870. One of these documents was even said to be the authentic draught of a treaty of alliance between the two Empires. Immediately a war of explanations, contradictions, and recriminations set in and when the year came to an end, the public mind was looking forward to either an interesting series of revelations, or, as seemed more probable, to the detection of a baffled statesman's mare's nest.

CHAPTER IV.

ITALY.-Vatican and Quirinal-Relation to French Politics-Cardinal HohenloheOld Catholics in France and at Rome-Abbé Michaud-Père Hyacinthe-Russia, Turkey, and the Vatican-Italian Parliament-Death of Mazzini-Municipal Elections at Rome and Naples-Eruption of Vesuvius-Autumn Floods-Finan cial Statement-Religious Corporations Bill-Pope's Allocution-Retirement of M. de Bourgoing.

SPAIN. Sagasta Ministry-Dissolution of Cortes-New Elections-Carlist Insurrection Battle of Oroquieta-Convention of Amorevieta-Ministry of SerranoMinistry of Zorrilla-Dissolution of the Cortes-Attempted Assassination of the King-Fire at the Escurial-Revolt at Ferrol-Impeachment of Sagasta Ministry -Financial Measure of Gomez-Bill for Abolition of Slavery in Porto RicoDisordered Condition of the Country.

BELGIUM.-Comte de Chambord-Lagrand Dumonceaux-Elections-Strikes. NETHERLANDS.-Tercentenary-Death of M. Thorbecke-International Association Congress at the Hague.

SWITZERLAND.-Rejection of Federal Reform-Geneva Arbitration-Bishop Mermillod-New Elections.

SWEDEN.―Millennial Celebration in Norway-Death of King Charles XV.
DENMARK.-King's Speech-Storms in the Baltic.

RUSSIA.-Second Centenary Celebration of Birth of Peter the Great-Condition of
Russia-Finances Statistical Congress-Policy in Foreign Affairs, and in Central
Asia-War with Khiva.

TURKEY.- Armenian and Bulgarian Church Questions - Ministerial ChangesQuestion of Succession to the Throne-Egypt and Abyssinia-Jews in Roumania -Servian Principality.

GREECE.-Ministerial Changes-Question of the Mines of Laurium.

ITALY.

THE Nazione, a Florentine journal, published at the beginning of the year an interesting article on the "dualist" representation of foreign Powers at Rome:-"The King is at the Quirinal, the Pope at the Vatican. There are two Courts, two societies, two diplomatic bodies, each with its own tendencies, passions, and interests.. The diplomatists accredited to the Vatican are often more Popish than the Pope; they imagine that they alone are the real representatives of their respective Governments, and look upon their colleagues who are accredited to the Italian Government almost in the light of usurpers."

The Pope confined himself rigorously to his little kingdom of the Vatican, the last relic of his temporal sovereignty. But he entertained personally, it is said, a not unkindly feeling towards his rival on the other side of the Tiber. "C'est le seul Italien qui a bon cœur-malgré lui," he would remark of him; and, with the indomitably sanguine spirit which always impelled Pius IX. to the more confident self-assertion the more facts seemed against him, he would express his belief that Victor Emanuel would not much longer remain on the Quirinal.

The Pope's daily life at this time is thus described: "When it is not a day for audiences, he usually first confers with Cardinal Antonelli on political questions, and then with the Cardinal-Vicar Patrizi on Church matters. The Pope very willingly gives audiences, as it pleases him to see people, and to show himself surrounded by his Court, which is the most ceremonious in the world. The prevailing colour in the costumes is scarlet, and the Pope alone is clothed in white. After the audience Pius IX. goes into the garden, and walks about till two o'clock, with two guards in front, one of his stewards by his side, and two privy chamberlains dressed in mediæval Spanish costume behind him. After mass he reads his letters, a great number of which come daily from foreign emperors, kings, and other high personages. At 10 p.m. the Pope dismisses his courtiers for the night." "The number of persons," the writer continues, "now residing at the Vatican, which consists of 50 separate buildings, with 14 courtyards and 12,000 rooms, is 3000. It is a town without streets. None of the officials have been changed. Antonelli is still Secretary of State, Negroni Minister of the Interior, Randi Minister of Police, and General Kanzler Minister of War. Mgr. de Mérode and Cardinal Antonelli detest each other, and each is at the head of a large party. De Mérode, an energetic and apparently earnest man, directs the extreme Opposition party, with the Jesuits and Ultramontanes; while the more sceptical and moderate Antonelli is supported by Cardinals Berardi, De Lucca, Silvestri, Di Pietro, Amyot, and Clarelli. The Pope is equally friendly to both parties."

When Easter came there were none of the usual celebrations at St. Peter's. The Pope held service in his private chapel. Once or twice during the year he was said to have been seen driving through the streets of Rome, and gazing at the new shops on the Corso, or at other monuments of the altered régime.

His mind was much occupied with thoughts of quitting the Eternal City altogether. The Jesuits and Ultramontanes in his councils strongly urged him to the step. As age advanced upon him, and the choice of a successor could not be far off, they were anxious that the next Conclave should take place in some Romanist land more likely to afford scope for the high ecclesiastical party than the modern kingdom of Italy, with its inveterate Liberalism. It was therefore rather their aim to represent Pius as a watched and oppressed" prisoner" in the Vatican, to work upon the pity of

his lieges elsewhere. For such representations, however, the Italian Government took care to give no handle. The freedom of the Vatican, and its master's power to go where and when he would, were in no degree infringed. In answer to an inquiry directed to the Austrian Court, the Pope received from Count Andrassy the reply that in no country would he find so secure a refuge as in the Vatican itself, or be so removed from the danger of political complications. The dispositions of the French President were also sounded by the Papal Court, though it was intimated that in no case would the Pontiff consent to enter a country where Republican institutions were actually in force. Thiers-whose personal politics had always been in favour of the Pope's Temporal Power-expressed his willingness to offer the Holy Father an asylum in France, only with the proviso that he must not bring the Papacy with him. Among the many difficulties of the game which the veteran French statesman had to play at this time, none were more evident than those which concerned his dealings with the Potentates of the Vatican and the Quirinal. To get the Pope on his side was to secure an important interest in those contemporary European forces which were most bitterly antagonistic to Bismarck and the German Empire. But, on the other hand, he could not favour Ultramontanism to any marked extent without giving dire offence to the Radicals of the Left, whose political programme involved secular education and the suppression of the priestly element generally. Again, to break with the King of Italy would have endangered the formation of a direct alliance between that monarch and the Emperor of Germany: to recognize his rights as against the Pope compromised the French Government with the powerful influences of clericalism. A critical question just now brought the difficulty to the foreground. When M. de Goulard, who had informally represented the French Government at the Court of Victor Emanuel, was appointed to the portfolio of Finance in place of M. Pouyer-Quertier, it became necessary to send a successor. Should he be regularly accredited as Minister? The question had been started before M. de Goulard's removal. He had himself declined to receive formal appointment. The matter involved inevitably offence either to the Pope or to the King. M. Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, announced his intention of presenting to the Assembly at Versailles a number of petitions from the French Catholics against accrediting any Minister to the Court of Rome. M. Thiers felt the full awkwardness of his situation should any discussion take place; and he contrived by successive postponements to avoid giving the Bishop the opportunity he desired before the Easter recess. Then, with as little delay as might be, he sent out, with full powers and dignity as bis diplomatic agent at Rome, M. Edouard Fournier. It seemed the least evil course of the two, and it rendered nugatory any debate at all on the clerical petitions, with the embarrassing questions such debate would have raised.

The Pope was disappointed and angry. "What are certain

Governments?" he said to an audience at the Vatican. "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; and the day will come when this exterminating angel will make known the justice of God, and the effects of His mercy.'

[ocr errors]

The Vatican Court as well as the Quirinal underwent a change of French diplomatists. The Marquis de Harcourt was succeeded by the Comte de Bourgoing. Both the new envoys managed to give pleasing assurances to the respective rulers to whom they were sent.

Cardinal Hohenlohe's appointment as German Ambassador at the Vatican, and his rejection by the Pope, have been already mentioned. At first, it is said, both the Pope and Cardinal Antonelli were disposed to concur in this appointment; but the Jesuits, fearing that it might produce a reconciliation between Germany and the Holy See, set every engine at work to prevent it: an endeavour in which they were strongly supported by the French clergy at Rome, and the editor of the Univers, M. Veuillot, on a visit at the time to the Holy City. "The policy of the Jesuits," observes a writer in the Italian paper, the Perseveranza," which does its utmost to prevent any distinction being made in theory or in practice between Jesuitism and Catholicism, here had a common ground of action with that of the French Chauvinistes, who hope to bring religious fanaticism into the field as their ally in the future war of revenge against Germany. . . . These are mighty influences on the anti-German side, and they place the Pope in an extremely difficult situation. The French clergy evidently claim to be the protectors of the Holy See, with the intention of afterwards making use of their position to influence the destinies of France. Religion is thus made the cloak of an extensive conspiracy, and the Pope, who professes to be the prisoner of the Italian Government, is really the prisoner of these ambitious plotters.'

دو

The anti-Infallibilist movement within the Church was gathering strength from many quarters. Its aspects in Germany have been already glanced at. In France it made itself conspicuous chiefly in the cases of the Abbé Michaud, vicar of the Madeleine, and of the Abbés Junqua and Mouls at Bordeaux, all three of whom resigned their clerical preferment as refusing to accept the recent dogma of the Vatican, and expressed their sentiments in incisive language. "Notwithstanding all the difficulties inherent in the task," wrote the Abbé Michaud in his letter to the Archbishop of Paris, "the world shall see sooner or later to which belongs the final victory: to those who combat for Christ governing the Pope by His Gospel, or to those who combat for the Pope supplementing Christ by his Syllabus." Later in the year M. Michaud wrote a series of letters to the Cologne Gazette which attracted much attention.

In Rome itself-within ear-shot of the Vatican-a Committee of "Old Catholics" was formed. Its organizer was the famous ex

Carmelite, Père Hyacinthe, who was at Rome for some months in the early part of the year, and held five "conferences" there in March and April. His Committee put forth a programme, of which the substance was this: the erection of its work on the foundation of Jesus Christ only, as the "Son of the living God, the sole Redeemer of souls and of nations," the one source of the regeneration which the world needs; the rejection of human traditions, especially those affirmed as dogmas by the late Vatican Council; the reform of the Catholic Church in pastors and flock, and the reunion of Christian Churches on the basis of the first eight centuries; continued recognition of the legitimate authorities within the Church; abstention from the formation of a new sect; right to resist trary prescriptions; efforts for calling together a "really free and Ecumenical Council." Hyacinthe's eloquence at Rome drew many hearers to his conferences. But the most startling testification on his part to that freedom of judgment in Church matters to which he laid claim, was the marriage which, under his lay appellation of M. Charles Loyson, he concluded in London in the month of August, with an American widow, Mrs Merriman.

arbi

With the Russian Court the relations of the Papacy were passing into a state of unwonted cordiality. An Ambassador was nominated by the Czar to the Holy See to replace the mere chargé d'affaires by which his Government had been represented there since the diplomatic rupture of 1865; and Cardinal Antonelli on the part of the Pope declared that the recent appointment of Archbishop Ledoschowski as Primate of Poland was a mere formality of no importance, and that the Polish Roman Catholic clergy in Russia should be authorized to teach and preach in the Russian language, and be placed under the authority of the Government.

With Turkey, on the other hand, the Vatican stood on terms of ill accord. The Grand Vizier Mahmoud Pasha had given up the estates of the Armenian Catholic Church to the Greek schismatics and banished its Patriarch Hassoun; and his successor Midhat Pasha showed no desire to listen to the remonstrances of Cardinal Antonelli on the subject.

The political history of the Italian kingdom offers very few salient points for remark this year. It is the history of a people working on to improvement in many ways, social, industrial, and commercial, and exhibiting a healthy freedom from partisan excite

ments.

The Parliamentary Session which began early in January furnished no debate of any consequence save that on the financial proposals brought forward by Signor Sella in the previous December. These were finally adopted by 208 votes against 160 on March 23rd.

On the 11th of March a vote was passed, with the concurrence of all parties in the Chamber, which affords a striking instance of the harmonizing force of Italian patriotism, and of the generous disposition of the people to forget the acrimonies of political difference in the recognition of the force of character which has achieved great things.

« PoprzedniaDalej »