Prisoner of the Vatican (47 page)

To Bruno
The Century That He Divined
Here Where He Was Burned at the Stake
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The first to speak was the head of the student organizing committee, who formally presented the statue to the mayor. Guiccioli, accepting the monument, dubbed it a symbol of "the triumph of freedom of conscience." The mayor of Nola then spoke briefly, thanking the people of Rome for their tribute "to this martyr of tyranny."

It was now Bovio's turn. It was a historic day, he intoned, struggling to be heard by the enormous crowd. "September 20 is less painful for the Papacy than June 9, for while the first was a conclusion, today is a beginning. Then Italy entered Rome, the final step of its journey. Today Rome inaugurates the religion of reason." The old religion of the Church, he said, had no place in the modern world. "Just as in 313 in Milan, the date when the Christian religion was mandated, by imperial decree, so today on June 9 in Rome, the date of the religion of reason is established, by the agreement of free peoples."

When the speeches were over, representatives of hundreds of organizations formed a line so that they could each lay a wreath at the monument. Among the most elaborate was one whose ribbon read simply: "The Anticlerical Women of Rome."

The Vatican meanwhile was effectively in a state of siege. The previous evening, a sixteen-car train filled with Italian troops arrived in Rome to offer additional protection. Soldiers and police in great number were placed at all the street corners in the vicinity of the Vatican. The Sant'Angelo bridge was crawling with soldiers. Along with numerous uniformed police were many, ever watchful officers in civilian clothes. In the end, order was maintained.
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But the Vatican was not letting this symbolic assault pass without a fight. In the days leading up to the ceremonies, bishops throughout Italy and beyond were mobilized to show their support. A typical petition came from Ferrara, sent to the pope on the very day of the rites, and titled "An Act of Reparation for the Scandal that on Pentecost of 1889 dishonors and outrages Catholic Rome." In the honoring of Bruno, it read, "we see the spirit of disbelief that is opposed to the spirit of faith, the spirit of apostasy opposed to the spirit of religion, the spirit of revolt that is opposed to the spirit of obedience, the spirit of pride, of avarice, sensuality, of the most unbridled egoism, which is at war with the spirit of humility, poverty, purity, and every holy sentiment."
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Feeling physically under attack, the pope asked various ambassadors to be with him on June 9. The previous Sunday the French ambassador, Lefevre de Béhaine, known for his personal devotion to the pontiff, met with Leo and assured him that he would delay his planned departure from Rome in order to be at his side. Béhaine, good to his word, went to see the pope on the ninth, finding him "in very good health, although very sad." Soon the Austrian ambassador was led in, followed by the Belgian ambassador. The scene recalled nothing so much as the day nineteen years earlier when the Italian army broke through Rome's wall and the besieged Pius IX sought comfort from the assembled foreign ambassadors.
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Rampolla drafted a long letter to the nuncios, which he sent two days after the unveiling. They were to give the details of the latest outrage against the Holy See to the governments where they served. The glorification of Bruno—"a man lacking any scientific or literary merit, famous only for his apostasy, for the monstrosity and notoriety of his errors"—had but one goal, Rampolla told them, the destruction of the Catholic religion and the papacy. The Italian House of Deputies, Rampolla reported, had participated in the ceremonies and, although Crispi had taken care to stay at a distance, he was the true mastermind of the whole affair. World leaders could no longer have any doubt that the pope's position in Rome had become "truly humiliating and intolerable."
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The cardinal secretary of state had already prepared the ground. On the day before the inauguration, he had sent a coded telegram to a number of his envoys, including Galimberti in Vienna and his nuncio in Paris, telling them to help drum up protests.
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Among those quickly responding was the papal nuncio in Munich, who, at a hastily arranged meeting on June 15, had presented Rampolla's June 11 letter to the Bavarian foreign minister, Baron Crailsheim.

"You know, Monsignor," said the baron, "that the Holy Father's cause is very dear to us. I can add that we were unhappy about the celebrations in Rome for Giordano Bruno." At this point, the nuncio no doubt had a good idea of what was to follow: "However we cannot do anything practical in favor of the Holy See. If the Bavarian government issued a protest against what was going on in Rome, the Italian government—which is very sensitive and possessive on this point—would create difficulties for us."

The nuncio pointed out that as a Protestant, the baron might not fully appreciate the enormity of the offense done to the dignity of the holy pontiff. But he got nowhere. Maddeningly, the foreign minister told him to look on the bright side. "After all," he said, "public order was not disturbed. You have to admit this represents progress compared to what happened the night when the body of His Holiness Pius IX was taken to San Lorenzo."
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Galimberti, in Vienna, feared that Rampolla would exploit the Catholics' anger over the ceremonies to build support for his plan to return the pope to power in Rome by destroying the Italian state. He wrote directly to the pope, again going around the secretary of state with the help of the pope's personal secretary. Written on the very day of the Bruno celebration, it told the pope that he faced a crucial choice. "There are two systems, or two programs. One of these takes as its supposition the need for the dissolution or dismemberment of what is now Italy. The other prefers the existence of a sensible, moderate Italy, which, in its own self-interest, recognizes the rights of the Holy See." The first school, Galimberti explained, "holds that Italian unity is incompatible with the real independence of the Holy See." The second, which, he pointed out, the German government supported, "believes the coexistence of the one with the other is possible." Using a somewhat ambiguous passive voice to avoid a direct attack on Rampolla, Galimberti added: "It is supposed that the influence that is currently dominant in the Vatican favors the first hypothesis."
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Rampolla's telegram of June 8 found a far more enthusiastic reception in Paris, where the papal nuncio immediately called in the archbishops of Paris, Lyon, and Bordeaux to tell them that it would be a great consolation to the Holy Father if they would send him a message of protest in their own names and in that of their archdioceses. This they did by telegram on the tenth. On the morning of the ninth, while the ceremonies for Bruno were still under way in Rome, the Paris nuncio met with the three main conservative leaders in France, a duke, a baron, and a count. Before he could speak, they told him that they had received "personal instructions" from Rampolla on the matter and had already sent telegrams of protest to the Vatican.

The nuncio called in all of the bishops then in Paris to urge them to organize protests in their dioceses, but he was worried that he was missing those outside the capital. He wrote to the secretary of state, proposing that to remedy this problem he send a circular letter to all of France's bishops.

Rampolla took this proposal to Leo, but the pontiff rejected it. The nuncios were to help prompt mass protests among Europe's Catholics, but it was important that they be viewed as spontaneous expressions of popular outrage, not as part of a campaign orchestrated by the Vatican.
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Meanwhile, from Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and elsewhere, reports of Catholic protests poured in to the Vatican. A lone discordant note came from The Hague; the nuncio to the Netherlands wrote, sheepishly, that although he and his assistant had worked for over two hours, they had been unable to decipher Rampolla's coded telegram of June 8.
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Finally, on the last day of the month, in an allocution to an assembly of cardinals, Leo spoke out publicly. His situation, he told them, had become intolerable; the hatred aimed at the Vicar of Christ was growing ever more dangerous. The Church's enemies, now in control in Rome, had sought to replace the pope with the champion of what they called the principle of freedom of thought, "but which is nothing other than the negation of God, of his Christ, of the morality embodied in the Gospels, and of all those religious principles on which civil society is based." The whole Catholic world, the pope lamented, was now forced to witness "the most profound humiliation of its Spiritual Head, and of its See, reinforced by the monument glorifying apostasy and impiety." Indeed, he warned, "Our own person is in danger."
²³

The Jesuits of
Civiltà Cattolica
saw the signs of God's wrath everywhere, publishing a long list of natural disasters that had swept Italy since the plans for Bruno's glorification had begun. "Has Bruno, beyond being what he was, become an evil omen, what in Naples they would call someone who gives the evil eye? One thing is indisputable: from the day that they began work on his monument, disasters of every kind—including floods, avalanches, hurricanes and the like—have brought desolation to the lands of many provinces."
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It was time for the pope to reconsider his decision to stay in Rome. Perhaps the moment had come when, like Noah, he should sail away, only to return when God's enemies were vanquished.

F
ROM PRACTICALLY HIS FIRST DAYS
on St. Peter's throne, Leo XIII turned time and again to the cardinals of the Curia to advise him on whether he should flee Rome, just as, year after year, he had his secretary of state put out feelers to various European governments to see which ones would agree to host him. Not surprisingly, the failure of his halting reconciliation efforts in the spring of 1887, and a series of events over the next two years culminating in the unveiling of the Bruno monument, led to yet another round of frenetic planning. But this time, many believed, the pope's threat to leave Rome was all too real.

By late 1888, continued tensions in Europe had led to widespread expectations of war, including fears by Germany and Austria of a French-Russian attack on their borders. The continuing agitation in France, linked to the possibility of a monarchist revolt led by Boulanger against the republican government, further fueled fears that war was near. On December 6, Galimberti expressed his own worries: "The international situation grows ever more serious and threatening. It would take only a puff of air to blow open the gates of the temple of Mars, which have only recently been closed."
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In response to the war fever, that same month Leo summoned two different groups of cardinals—including many of the major figures in the Church—to examine the question of leaving Rome once more. Again, they recommended against immediate flight but advised that if Italy were drawn into a European war—a prospect they viewed as both likely and imminent—he should leave at once. Yet they continued to worry that Italy's clergy might abandon him if he were to go.
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The cardinals warned that foreign governments could not be trusted. Should he flee, Leo risked finding himself even worse off. As one put it, "One could argue with certainty that the Holy Father, having taken refuge in a foreign state, far from finding that he had support for reclaiming his various rights there, would not even have the ability to communicate, nor still less that freedom of speech that is left to him in Rome."
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Despite these dire predictions, the pope's fears of an imminent war and his sense of being under attack in Italy led him to make more detailed preparations for leaving Rome than he ever had before. Letters were prepared for all the cardinals who served as prefects of the Sacred Congregations that formed the central structure of the Holy See, telling them how to get ready for the pope's flight. Secrecy was tight. "It is the Holy Father's wish," Rampolla's cover letter informed them, "that while you will carefully follow those measures that are specified there and take them at the opportune time, you will guard these sheets with the greatest care so that they do not end up in any other hands and you will observe the greatest secrecy about them, for they are not to be communicated to anyone without prior pontifical authorization, under pain of major excommunication." It was not every day that a pope threatened the cardinals of the Curia with excommunication.

Should the pope leave Rome, the cardinals were told, each of them was to join the pontiff "as soon as the place of the new pontifical residence is known, and without any need for further invitation." They were to bring only those officials and aides whose presence was deemed indispensable for the proper functioning of their department.
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Leo had another worry. "In case the Holy Father comes to be prevented by force from any communication with the Church, or is shut up in prison, or even deported," the papal instructions specified, "a special Congregation is to be established composed of no fewer than five cardinals." This body would act on the pope's behalf until he was again free. "Should the Holy Father be taken elsewhere by violence," Rampolla told them, "the cardinals resident in the Curia will decide ... whether it is better to follow the Holy Pontiff to the place of his deportation, or remain in Rome, or rather go to another country which is safer and freer. In any case, they will take care to always remain together and, so far as possible, close to the Holy Father."
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If Leo was afflicted by anxieties about leaving Rome, Crispi was afflicted by an obsession of his own, seeing signs everywhere of a French-Vatican plot aimed at Italy. Crispi's wild accusations contributed mightily to the crisis atmosphere, unsettling not only Rome and Italy but the European powers as well. At one point in 1888, the Italian prime minister urged the British government to send a naval fleet to the Mediterranean to foil what he claimed was a plan by the French navy to launch an attack on Genoa. When the British sent their ships, at great expense, only to find that the report was based on nothing more than an unconfirmed rumor from a Vatican informant, they were not pleased. Although they appreciated Crispi's pro-British bent, they had long viewed him as a hothead, and now they secretly hoped he would be replaced before more damage was done. Nor does it appear that the leaders of Germany or Austria had much respect for him, although they were certainly pleased by his strong support of the Triple Alliance and his antipathy toward France. The previous fall Galimberti, in one of the letters he sent directly to the pope, reported: "Crispi is held in low esteem as both a politician and a diplomat. They laugh constantly at him in Berlin and Vienna."
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