Pope Pius II

“ Beust in Vienna, Hohenlohe in Munich, Ollivier in Paris, were not tranquil like the priest in Rome. Sooner or later they would all be engulfed in the stormy sea of revolution—all but the Church and the Pope. The Syllabus would abide for ever, and with it the Canons of the Vatican Council.... The Pope has proved by facts that he knows how to govern better than any other sovereign. We defy any emperor whatever to govern a country fourteen years as Pope Pius IX has governed Rome. ”

“ Men spoke little in those times but of what the Pope was doing, or purposed to do. Unlike his predecessor, who shrunk from any discussion on public affairs, Pius invited all who had any grievances to report, or plans of improvement to propose, to come freely to his presence. He removed the most irksome restraints from the Jewish population; lent a favourable ear to projects of railroads and other scientific and industrial enterprises, as well as to the diffusion of instruction among the lower classes; and permitted the establishment at Rome of a political journal, the first known in Italy. ”

“ The pope's answer was as characteristic as the smile that accompanied it. "Come," he said, "did he not allow that after all I was a good priest? Now, of all praise, that is the only one I have ever valued."
"A man who hid a boundless ambition under a pretence of humility," wrote another opponent. And in one sense most certainly Pius X was a man of ambition, an ambition that had taken shape within him as he knelt before the altar of the cathedral of Castelfranco to receive the priesthood with all that it entailed. Study, prayer, labour, self-denial and unlimited self-devotion ”

“ He has vanished like a shadow, first from the greatest throne in Europe, then from the sight of men, periit; and the Papacy permanet in you more than ever invincible. You, Pope Pius, for the time a prisoner, continue, from the Vatican, with Christ and in Christ, to reign beloved, blessed, applauded, over all who have a believing heart, an upright soul. Napoleon III. has gone down to that city of the dead which shall form the pedestal of your greatness in all ages: scabellum pedum tuorum ”

“ Young men, leaders of armies, courted death in battle to win the favour of their sovereigns; wherefore he, a decrepit old man, might surely await his end with calmness. He then wanders off into a long disquisition on the philosophy of Polybius, and forgets entirely to set down further details of his imprisonment, or to explain the cause thereof.
Pius IV. had died at the end of 1565, and had been succeeded by Michele Ghislieri, the Cardinal of Alessandria, as Pius V. Like his predecessor, the new Pope was a Milanese by birth, but in character and aims the two Popes were entirely different. ”

“ The Pope stood in front of the throne, smiling a little, and looking down upon his people; for his they were, from the moment they saw him. Nor was it difficult to be sure he liked them. You hear, in Rome, that it will not be long before Pius X. will be as difficult of access as was his predecessor; but, in whatever manner his present small liberties may come to be curtailed, one thing is certain: that he will always want the people to come to him. ”

“ All society needed a saviour, as every rational creature knew. "The Pontiff is now almost alone in the world, the representative of truth, justice, and good sense." And hence, the poor world, swimming in error, fraud and absurdity—"the world sees in Pius IX a true master, a true judge, a true sovereign, and it cleaves to him as the bulwark of society." The Syllabus suffices to prove that the Pope alone declares the truth: "the Syllabus which burst like a thunderbolt out of a serene sky, both illuminated and blasted." ”

“ But the movements of the Roman populace are matters of more rapid execution. What the Pope was a month since, every one knows;—Pius the powerful, Pius the popular, Pius the restorer of liberty to all the aggrieved nations of Italy, with a slight appendix, including the aggrieved nations of Europe. But the populace, which gave him his titles, have now changed them, and he is "Pius the Monk."
In a year whose every week produces a revolution, who can predict the events of a month? In the middle of this month of May, Pope Pius is virtually a prisoner in his palace ”

“ As the cross itself was folly in the estimation of the early unbelieving world, so were such theological occupations, at a time when the Sovereign Pontiff had not an inch of ground whereon he could freely tread, a subject for jesting and sarcasm to the worldly-wise of the nineteenth century. It was some time before they came to understand that a Pope is a theologian more than a king, that, as such, he is sure of the future, and that the solemn proceeding in regard to the Immaculate Conception was a triumphant reply to all the errors of modern thought. ”

“ Thousands who are inclined to acknowledge the pope's authority over their consciences, within the proper circle of his spiritual domain, would prize an encyclical to that effect, as if each letter were of gold or precious stones, because it would prove to the world that Pius IX was moved only by his own impulsive nature and excited imagination when he declared that the papacy could not become reconciled to, "and agree with, progress, liberalism, and civilization" as they prevail among the modern nations. ”

“ In 1561 pope Pius IV. invited him to Rome, offering him a yearly stipend of 500 ducats, and undertaking to establish and maintain his press there. The profits on publications were to be divided between Paolo Manuzio and the Apostolic camera. Paolo accepted the invitation, and spent the larger portion of his life, under three papacies, with varying fortunes, in the city of Rome. Ill-health, the commercial interests he had left behind at Venice, and the coldness shown him by pope Pius V., induced him at various times and for several reasons to leave Rome. ”

“ Nor was it the Catholic press alone that paid tribute to the holy life and noble aims of the dead pope. "All men who hold sincere and personal holiness in honour," said The Times, "will join with the Roman Catholic Church in her mourning for the Pontiff she has lost. The policy of Pius X has had many critics, not all of them outside the Church he ruled, but none has ever questioned the transparent honesty of his convictions or refused admiration for his priestly virtues. Sprung from the people, he loved and understood them as only a good parish priest can do. ”

“ Peter, an event which threw the Romans, gentle and simple, into a state of delirious joy. Pius VI had died in captivity at Valence, on the 29th of August, 1799; his, successor, Cardinal Chiaramonti, was elected at Venice (Rome being in the hands of the French) on the 16th of March, 1800, and on the 3d of July of the same year the French, having been expelled from the Papal States by the Neapolitans and Austrians, the new Pope, who had taken the name of Pius VII, came back to his own. Everybody believed that once more “the Church would have peace” ”

“ Anderson of Drury Lane can furnish any amount of popular feeling or pious awe at a shilling a head; and the managers know these things in Rome, where labor is much cheaper than with us. Pius returned to Rome under cover of the French bayonets, to find a people cowed and sulky—contrasting their traditions with the presence of the Gaul, remembering in bitterness the days before the Papacy, and imputing this crowning finish of their disgrace to the Pope forced back upon them. ”

“ Another prophecy, that of the venerable servant of God, Anna Maria Taigi, uttered in 1823, is very full and clear. After describing minutely the revolution of 1848 and all the sufferings that Rome and its ruler would undergo at that time, she added, “The Pope whose destiny this is, is now a simple priest and far beyond the sea.” After minutely describing the personal appearance of Pius IX, she continued: “He will be elected in a very unusual way and contrary to his own and general expectation. ”

“ A month later he changed his name and assumed that of Pius IX. Learning that his old enemy was in Rome with his family at the time, he sent him word that, although he had refused to allow the Archbishop of Imola to stand godfather to his child, he might not feel the same objection to the Pope, who, if the infant were not yet baptised, would be glad to be its sponsor. En passant one is struck with wonder that, amid all the preoccupation and inevitable excitement of that great change in his life, Pius IX should have found time to think of the man at all. ”

“ Now, for the first time, partly no doubt through the breaking down of obstinate prejudice, but chiefly through the particular accents of the voice that spoke and the marvellous personality of the speaker, that message has become audible, and Pius X has succeeded where diplomacy and even sanctity of another complexion have failed. Men have recognized the transparent love of the Pastor where they have been deaf to the definitions of the Pontiff; they have at any rate paused to listen to the appeals of their Father, when they have turned away from the authority of the Rector mundi. ”

“ The revolutionists admire the courage of Pius IX. Such apostolic courage commanded the admiration of the enemies of the Papacy. The deputy, Brofferio, said in the parliament of Turin, whilst his colleagues, revolutionists like himself, applauded: “An old man, exhausted, sickly, without resources, without an army, on the brink of the grave, curses a potentate who slaughters a people; I feel moved in my inmost soul; I imagine myself borne back to the days of Gregory VII.; I reverence and applaud.”
[pg 262]
The Russian Envoy insults the Pope. ”

“ He still probably had moments, when the old faith in men broke through his later suspicion and exclusiveness. He was ever looking for a new religion to issue forth from Rome, [15] and for the moment dreamed that a nationalist Pope might be its herald. His appeal, however, was ludicrous in its miscalculation of the facts. "Be a believer," he said to Pius, "and unite Italy." ”

“ All alike favored the restoration of the Holy Father, and the securing of his government against the accidents of revolution in the future by placing it under the protection of the Great Powers. “The affairs Rome,” wrote the Russian Chancellor in a circular, “cause to the government of his Majesty the Emperor great concern; and it were a serious error to think that we take a less lively interest than the other Catholic governments in the situation to which his Holiness Pope Pius IX. has been brought by the events of the time. ”

“ A little later, January, 1862, Cardinal Antonelli replied in the name of Pius IX. to the Marquis de Lavallette, the French Ambassador at Rome, showing that it was by no means true to say that the Pope was at variance with Italy. “An Italian himself, and the chief Italian, he suffers when Italy suffers, and he beholds with pain the severe trials to which the Italian church is subjected. As to arranging with those who have robbed us, we never will do any such thing. ”

“ Paul III., a politic and worldly wise old man, with considerable desire to do such parts of a Pope's duty as could be accomplished without interfering with his own projects and schemes of ambition, was quite as much minded as any member of the sacred college to [Pg 80] preserve intact to Rome its bishops and high priests, the monopoly of those sacerdotal emoluments and perquisites, which sacramental Christianity was contrived to afford in abundance. Pius IX., a better man, as living in better times than Paul III., found himself in front of the same eternal difficulty. ”

“ Under the existing emergencies a skillful statesman would have found a broad field for the display of ability in escaping the pitfalls before him. But Pius IX was not a statesman in any sense, and knew but little of public affairs as they existed in the Italian provinces, except what centered in the papacy, and nothing of international relations, except that as pope he was tied to the car of the reigning sovereigns, and was compelled, nolens volens, to share their fortunes. ”

“ As regards his own theology, it is partly sound, partly the reverse. Whilst entirely misapprehending the doctrine of infallibility, and denying what he conceives it to be, he vigorously maintains the indefectibility of the Catholic church, and acknowledges the claim of her pastors to “descent in an unbroken line from Christ and His apostles.” Such is one of the powerful agents in the great movement of the age. The most influential of all, however, was Pope Pius IX. himself. English people and Americans often sought his presence. ”

“ With the Papal government, on the other hand, they had neither tolerance nor freedom to trust to. They knew that if they dared to provoke it, the stroke of Pius IX would come down hot and heavy. The oath of a bishop to the Pope, which obviously aims more at feudal vassalage than at spiritual works, had made the Emperor Joseph II feel that men bound by it were not citizens in the sense of free men. "It does not accord with the fidelity or obedience due by a bishop, as a subject, to his sovereign.... A bishop who feels himself bound by that oath must become perjured." ”

“ At the death of Pius IX he left to whosoever should succeed him, as an official inheritance, the decision of the question whether or no the Church should acquiesce in and become reconciled to the abolition of the temporal power of the pope, or be agitated and possibly further disrupted by the demand for its restoration. In the meantime Italy had become an organized nation, and was so recognized throughout the world. ”