Prisoner of the Vatican (19 page)

While most of Italy's anticlerical clubs and republican organizations were either local or, at best, linked to weak national associations, two of the major sources of anticlerical agitation in Italy were parts of well-organized international networks. One was the Socialist International, founded by Marx during the early years of Italian unification, which at the time included both socialists and anarchists. By 1872 the first Italian section of the International had been organized in Rimini; another opened the following year in Bologna. The other large network, a very different kind, was the Freemasons. What united them was their belief that the papacy was a vestige of the past that had no place in modern times.

Followers of the Socialist International were champions of the working classes, and their primary targets were land and factory owners, other elites, and the government. Their view of a man like Lanza or Visconti Venosta was not much more favorable than their view of Pius IX. The Church was for them only a secondary issue. The Freemasons, on the other hand, were another matter. Heavily influenced by the republican ideals of Mazzini, they championed a secular state, worshiping at the altar of science and progress. Although they came from a wide range of social classes, their leaders were mainly professionals.

The Socialist International ultimately proved to be a much greater threat to the Church, but Pius IX and, later, Leo XIII were obsessed with the danger posed by the masons, whom, along with the socialists and freethinkers, they indiscriminately branded as members of "sects."
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Yet at the time of Italian unification the masons were few and their organization weak. The first Masonic lodge was established in Rome in 1873, but it was only after 1879 that the few thousand members in Italy were sufficiently organized to carry out any concerted action. Not that it prevented Church publications—and, indeed, popes—from portraying them as the occult forces behind Italian unification, responsible for the taking of Rome.

The Roman police archives for these years are full of reports of violent encounters between anticlerics and loyal Catholics. The police kept the anticlerics under careful watch, and the government had little affection for them. Not only were their raucous demonstrations and sacrilegious publications a source of continuing embarrassment for the government internationally, but they were apt to direct their barbs against the government and the king as well.

On October 15,1870, the Roman authorities wrote to the provincial government of nearby Frascati to ask about reports they had received of a hostile demonstration against a priest who had allegedly refused to baptize a baby. "They tell me," the Roman police official wrote, "that the population has even descended into violent acts against the parish priest's residence, which was pelted with stones and damaged." Two days later the head of Frascati's provincial government responded, re-counting the facts. Tarquinio Balzoni had brought his newborn baby to the cathedral to be baptized, but the priest in charge "vigorously refused to administer the Baptism because the Godfather had been excommunicated both for being the Vice Secretary of the Municipal Government and for having voted in the plebiscite for the annexation of the Roman Provinces to the Kingdom of Italy." The priest's refusal provoked the ire of the citizenry, and attempts by the head of the province and the chief of the police squad to convince him to perform the baptism got nowhere. But, the provincial head hastened to add, there had been no violence and no attack on the priest's home. These were malicious rumors.
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On December 6, 1870, in a typical report, a Roman police official wrote that some youths were running through Rome's streets at night shouting "Long live Pius IX!" Other small groups—of a different bent—had been disturbing public tranquility by shouting "Long live the Republic!" The official assured police headquarters that he was doing all he could to discover who was behind the disorders and to prevent them in the future.
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Meanwhile, other disturbing reports told of the Vatican's plans to use the observance of the Immaculate Conception to organize a demonstration against the Italian government. The police official in charge of the area around the Vatican, warning of these plans, relayed a bizarre rumor. Word was circulating around the Vatican, he reported, "that on the sacred day of the Conception a miracle will take place. People will wake up to find that not a single Piedmontese soldier remains in Rome!!"
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The Italian authorities did have reason to worry. At 4
P.M.
on December 8, disorders erupted on the imposing steps of St. Peter's and beneath the columns stretching out around the square. The police report the following day found fault on both sides, blaming the violence on "the reciprocal hatred between the lower classes of Rome and those who see themselves as the most loyal supporters of the Pope's temporal power." Angry shouts and threats had led to fisticuffs and general may hem. With the arrival of a squad of police, the rioters dispersed, and seven arrests were made.
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Three days later, new violence broke out in St. Peter's Square. The police had gotten word that the troublemakers were going to return to the basilica to create more mischief, so the official in charge stationed police throughout the square in front of the world's most famous church. Through the afternoon, more and more men of an anticlerical bent streamed into the piazza—at least a thousand, according to later police reports. The police struggled to get them to disperse. Around 5
P.M.,
as two young members of the pope's Swiss Guard left St. Peter's, one of the groups of young men approached them, accusing them of being
caccialepri,
former members of the reviled urban papal police squad. A growing crowd, in an increasingly foul mood, began to shout "Kill them! They're
caccialepri!
" The police rushed in and escorted the two young men to safety. When they arrested two of the troublemakers, hundreds of their companions began threatening the officers, demanding that they be released. Police reinforcements moved in, arresting eight men in all. In this and other such cases, what stands out is how many of those arrested were artisans: a tinsmith, a hatmaker, a blacksmith, a cabinetmaker.
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Violent encounters between the anticlerics and Catholics erupted with regularity around the city in these first months and years after the taking of Rome; remarkably, none resulted in serious injury. One of the more dramatic of these scenes occurred on March 10,1871, at the Church of Jesus, the Jesuits' principal church, and so a particularly juicy target for the anticlerics. The previous day, a group of young anticlerics had confronted a group of devoted Catholics of the church. Their accounts varied. According to the Catholics, a young man named Enrico Santini, a lieutenant in the national guard, came into the church during the sermon and began to ridicule the preacher. After the service, as he was leaving with his coterie, he again raised his voice to the other churchgoers: "You don't believe all that nonsense that that monk has been spouting?" he asked. A group of angry young men confronted him, and a fight broke out.

A later government report told a different story: Santini, wearing civilian clothes, had attended mass at the Church of Jesus. At 11:30
A.M.,
as people were leaving, twenty former
caccialepri,
using as their pretext the charge that they had seen Santini smile disrespectfully, attacked him with fists and sticks, leaving him bleeding. It was due to this unprovoked assault, in this account, that the following day some friends of Santini's decided to gather outside the huge door of the Church of Jesus, waiting for the celebrants to come out from mass.

The anticlerical crowd grew rapidly to two thousand, spilling out beyond the piazza and into the small streets that fed it.
Civiltà Cattolica,
in its account of the events that followed, characterized the throng as "composed in large part of filthy plebes and lowly beggars," many of whom were "either nonbelievers, or foreign Protestants in the city, or Jews." Again the chaos that ensued spawned two very different stories. In the liberal press, what precipitated events were the
caccialepri,
who strutted out of the church with a threatening swagger. "This is one of the usual lies of the liberal press," responded
Civiltà Cattolica.
"Can you imagine how a handful of young men, courageous, true, but virtuous and modest, as are those whom the rabble call
'caccialepri,'
would want to leave the church with a threatening expression toward such a large crowd?" What both sides admit is that the crowd showered the young Catholic men with insults, and scuffling broke out on the steps of the church. The police already stationed there were soon reinforced by two companies of infantry, who formed a defensive line in front of the church, facing the crowd. Despite repeated orders to disperse, the people would not leave, so the soldiers fixed their bayonets and began to move toward the throng. The crowd retreated from the soldiers but then reformed, continuing to hurl insults at the men filing out of the church.

Amid the mayhem, the soldiers received orders to move into the church itself. As the secular Roman newspaper
La Libertà
told the story, the police and soldiers were forced to go in to quell the violence that had broken out: "Some police agents and some soldiers entered the church where the disorder was great. Many clubs were seized, belonging for the most part to those who were already in the church; and it was discovered that some of these had blades affixed to them. It has come to our attention that a number of knives were also seized." Again,
Civiltà Cattolica
offered a very different story. The huge doors of the church, which had been closed as soon as the disorder in the piazza began, were flung open violently and "a horde of
carabinieri,
national guard, and policemen raced in furiously with their swords out and their daggers drawn, followed by soldiers with their rifles aimed straight ahead. It was this violent entry of armed forces in the church that was the true cause of the disorder that followed, especially because of the fright it gave the women who were inside. Many were arrested in the church, honest, upstanding young men, guilty of nothing other than having attended the sacred gathering, and among them a young priest, the son of Count Barbellini." For the Jesuit journal, the lesson was clear: "These disorders, which have by now become so frequent, are proof of the ... impossibility of the coexistence in Rome of two Sovereigns, the one spiritual, the other temporal."
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Italy's minister of foreign affairs, Emilio Visconti Venosta, was so concerned by the poor impression that news of the melee was making abroad that he sent a long dispatch to his ambassadors, offering the government's account. "It is possible that the reactionary press," he wrote, "is seeking to give these incidents an importance that they are far from meriting. It would be well if you were in a position to counteract these exaggerations with the truth." In his account, the troubles had all begun with the priest, the Jesuit Father Tommasi. In a series of sermons at the Church of Jesus, the priest had angered the city's patriotic majority by his constant, and barely veiled, political diatribes. The partisans of the old regime, Visconti charged, saw attending Tommasi's fulminations as a way to flaunt their own hostility to the Italian state. Realizing the potential for an outbreak of popular anger against the champions of papal rule, the government made sure that police were outside to maintain order. Indeed, on the day in question, the crowd was well behaved until, as the worshipers began to file out, some in the crowd began to whistle at them. "A
caccialepre
surrounded by many of his comrades responded," Visconti wrote, "with various gestures and ironical remarks." This in turn led to an exchange of punches and blows with clubs on the church steps.

According to the Italian foreign minister, the police and soldiers moved in immediately, making some arrests and quelling the disorder, but at the same time they heard shouts of distress from women in the church, so they moved inside, quickly restoring order there as well. Thanks to the authorities' quick response, there had been no serious injuries. It was worth noting, Visconti pointed out, that among those arrested inside the church was a priest, Count Barbellini, caught as he was distributing clubs to the
caccialepri.'
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If Visconti and Lanza were eager to trumpet the Church's freedom in the new Italy and the continued respect enjoyed by the pope, anticlerics had a very different agenda. For them, the taking of Rome meant the end of centuries of clerical tyranny, the close of an era of medieval superstition, and the beginning of a bright new future of science and reason. And in showing their disdain for the central beliefs of Catholicism, they found few occasions more potent than those that marked the death of one of their heroes.

An early opportunity of this kind presented itself in April 1871 with the death of Mattia Montecchi, one of the leaders of the 1849 Roman Republic. Rome witnessed an event that would earlier have been inconceivable, a civil funeral and burial. To aggravate the Church further, the ceremonies were scheduled for Ash Wednesday. Seven thousand people strode solemnly through Rome's streets. The banners of scores of republican societies were held aloft while assorted veterans of Garibaldi's battles marched proudly. For the first time, too, Rome saw a group marching publicly under the banner of the Freemasons and, just behind them, another carrying the white banner of Rome's Society of Freethinkers. Many of Rome's municipal councilors walked behind the funeral carriage, whose cross had been removed for the day, and each guild—of goldsmiths, marble workers, hairdressers, carriage drivers, hatmakers, tailors—marched with a tricolored flag.

The significance of the sacrilegious rite was not lost on either side. The liberal newspaper,
La Capitale,
enthused: "Yesterday's demonstration was majestic, powerful, solemn. Honoring Montecchi, it affirmed, in a public fashion, a new civil faith ... This splendid affirmation of emancipated conscience was necessary in Rome, the ancient city of the priests." In contrast,
Civiltà Cattolica,
shocked at the demonic display, downplayed the significance of the number of participants, composed, it asserted, of "not a small number of Jews and Garibaldians, who constituted the majority of that rabble."
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