166 The Italian Romantics. — Gioberti [1815-46

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of Savoy as greater than its dominions. He claimed Venice for it, and suggested the aid of France, "because she never succeeded in keeping her conquests." In these exhortations no mention was made of the Papacy. The monarchy was warned not to attempt the impossible, not to cling to the past, but to prepare for the future.

The foresight of the politician was heralded by Italian Romanticism. In addition to the writings described in an earlier chapter, the Inni Sacri of Alessandro Manzoni, published in 1815, may be mentioned. With the Promem Sposi, published in 182T, the same author presented his nation and the world with a nearly faultless masterpiece. He exalted the mission of poetry to the ideal task of preparing the moral resurrection of a people. After struggles of doubt Manzoni had been won back to Christianity by the writings of Port-Royal and of Pascal. The unity of faith in Italy permitted the religious philosopher to lay almost exclusive stress on ethics. In politics he equally disapproved of violent measures and of conspiracies. His immense authority was opposed to Mazzini, who supported both; and later on it weighed heavily in the scale in favour of a united monarchical State.

In marked contrast to the moderation of Manzoni, the Piedmontese, Vincenzo Gioberti, a priest and philosopher, next entered the lists in 1843 with the publication of the Primato Morale e Civile degli Italiani, followed two years later by the still more important Prolegomeni al Primato. Gioberti wrote in exile, at Brussels, and his fantastic outpourings gave rise to the question whether the author ever believed in his own dream or whether his object had been to delude the Papacy as to the real significance of the movement. In any case, after the appearance of the Primato the idea of Italian unity, up to then represented by Mazzini, became embodied in Gioberti. The Primato, which this work proclaims, is that of Italy. The Papacy, the seat of Catholicism, the guardian of civilisation, had secured for the Italian people the first rank amongst nations. Not by violence and revolution, but by a return to the Guelf policy of Julius II — not by centralisation, but by a confederacy — could the unity of Italy be obtained without foreign help. The Papacy was not an impediment to that unity, but rather its necessary condition. The present weakness of Italy was due not to the Governments or to the clergy, but to the decline of literature, to the laziness and mediocrity of tire higher classes. The vision of Gioberti was the resurrection of Italy, by means of a primacy in science and in art founded upon religion. The Pope was to be not only the head of the universal Church, but also the head of the Italian League. He was by right the paternal arbiter and peace-maker of Europe, the spiritual father of mankind, the protector of the Latin race, and the heir of the Imperium.

The Jesuits realised the danger of these views and attacked Gioberti, who replied in his Prolegomeni, and later in the Gesuita moderno. In

1843-6] Cesare Balbo. — Massimo oV Azeglio 167

the Prolegomena he termed the suppression of the Society of Jesus just and opportune, and accused it, though less vehemently than in 1847 and in the Gesuita moderno, of having destroyed the ancient discipline, the hierarchical order in the Church, and thereby wrought inextricable confusion in the minds of men. He spoke in absolute contrast with de Maistre, who advised the Papacy to use " its Janissaries," because a sect, like the Freemasons, could only be opposed by a corporation, such as the Jesuits, and because the doctrine of the Jesuits was essentially the Catholic doctrine.

Gioberti's view was, curiously enough, not unsympathetic to Gregory XVI. Neither he himself, a Camaldolese monk, nor his Secretary of State, the Barnabite monk Lambruschini, were friends of the Jesuits. Theiner, the learned German theologian, was commissioned by Gregory XVI to justify the suppression of the Order, with the aid of the material contained in the Papal archives. Pellegrino Rossi, who, in 1845, was appointed by Guizot French ambassador to the Holy See, encountered few difficulties, when, notwithstanding the opposition of the French Catholic party, he obtained the promise of the suppression of the Jesuits in France. The promise was rendered nugatory by the passive resistance of the Society itself, which rightly counted on the future victory of the French Ultramontanes. This victory was won after the fall of LouisPhilippe, in the days of Pius IX.

In the year 1843 another Piedmontese, Count Cesare Balbo, attempted to deal with similar questions. The Speranze d' Italia were dedicated to Gioberti, but the sober-minded political thinker banished the Primato into the realm of dreams. Balbo's chief problem was how the liberation of Italy from foreign rule was to be effected. The twofold position of the Popes and their consequent relations to Catholic Christendom disqualified them to lead a movement, whose object was independence. For its realisation Balbo counted on political eventualities. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the ambitious plans of Russia, pointed to an Austrian mission in the near East, and compensation on the Danube for the provinces lost in Italy. Until such an occasion arose, Balbo recommended a Lombard Federation, headed by Piedmont. He discountenanced revolutionary methods or appeals for foreign assistance. He advocated a moderate policy, and directed the efforts of his countrymen to the elevation of the moral standard, an increase of culture, and an improvement of internal conditions.

Massimo d' Azeglio, Manzoni's son-in-law, in his Ultimi casi di Momagna, which appeared in 1846, spoke with reverence of Catholicism and of its head, but ruthlessly exposed all the consequences of Papal misrule, principally in the Romagna. He showed the arrogance and incapacity of the Delegates, the arbitrariness of the administration, the chaotic proceedings of the Courts of law, and the impotence of the supreme authority in Rome. D' Azeglio speaks as an eyewitness,

168 Rosmini.— Election of Puis IX [1832-46

like the Bolognese Marco Minghetti, who corroborates his facts. The Precetto Politico di Prima Classe was in force against all those who were not actually condemned, but merely suspected. Whoever came under this edict of police was not allowed to leave his residence, had to be at home at certain hours, to report himself once a fortnight to the police inspector, to go to confession every month, and show his certificate of confession to the police. Finally, he had to submit once a year to three days of spiritual exercises in a convent selected by his Bishop. Whoever did not keep these rules was sentenced to three years' penal servitude. This Precetto Politico caused the condemnation on one occasion, in the Romagna alone, of 229 persons.

In 1832 was published a plan of reform, drawn up by the most learned priest in Italy, the Catholic philosopher and founder of an Order, Antonio Rosmini. Some of the ideas of Sala can be traced in Rosmini's Cinque Piaghe della Santa Chiesa. His proposals of reform are an energetic protest against the worldliness of the Church and the decay of the priestly ideal. Sala had advocated the separation of the spiritual from the temporal domain. Rosmini recommended the participation of the laity in the elections of Bishops and parish priests, reform of the education of the clergy, and, if not a total separation between Church and State, at least the greatest possible independence for the Church, and renunciation of earthly advantages. By acknowledging the constitutional system in an Italian Confederation, Rosmini still thought it possible to preserve the Temporal Power and to secure the primacy for the Pope amongst the Italian Princes.

Fully recognising that his system was crumbling away, and that a younger generation would have to deal with altered conditions, Gregory XVI died on July 1, 1846. The ardent longing of Rosmini and of his friends for reform in Church and State, the national aspirations of the Italian patriots for unity, liberty, and independence, the hopes of the world, centred on the new wearer of the Tiara.

An astonishingly short Conclave, the shortest held for three hundred years, resulted in the election of the Bishop of Imola, Cardinal Count Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, who ascended the Chair of St Peter as Pius IX. He was only fifty-four years of age, and known to be pious, kind-hearted, and of a bright, genial disposition. It was rumoured that he was a student of the works of Gioberti, Balbo, and d'Azeglio. The most tragical pontificate of modern times opened with a generous amnesty. It was welcomed with boundless hope, and Italians cherished the belief that the dream of the Middle Ages was realised, and that at last they witnessed the advent of II Papa Angelico.

CHAPTER VI

GREECE AND THE BALKAN PENINSULA

The Treaty of Bucharest, concluded on May 28, 1812, between the Russian Emperor and the Ottoman Sultan, marks an important epoch in the development of what was to become known, a few years later, as the Eastern Question. By this instrument the Russian frontier was advanced to the Pruth and to the northern, or Kilia, branch of the Danube. More significant still, the claim of Russia to interfere between the Sultan and his Christian subjects, foreshadowed in the Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji of 1774, received a new sanction in the fifth article, which confirmed " the contracts and conventions which had been counted among the privileges of Moldavia," and in the eighth article, which stipulated for certain concessions to the insurgent Servians. Whatever the views of the Powers interested in setting bounds to the southward advance of Russia, the times were not propitious for any active protest against an arrangement which, for years to come, was to make Moldavia and Wallachia practically Russian provinces, and set the seal on claims which, sooner or later, would lead to further encroachments of the Orthodox empire on the Turkish power.

The Eastern Question, during the next fateful years, was obscured by the vaster issues raised by the titantic struggle which ended in the downfall of Napoleon. The Emperor Alexander I, moreover, had been placed by the outcome of the Moscow campaign in the van of united Europe ; and, whatever the suspicions that might be entertained of his ultimate designs in the East, the supreme necessity of maintaining an unbroken front against the common revolutionary enemy served for many years to prevent these suspicions from finding open expression. The perils involved in the probable break-up of the Ottoman empire were, indeed, fully appreciated by statesmen. For Great Britain, anxious for the security of her Mediterranean power and of the trade-routes to India, the integrity of that empire had long been a political axiom ; and Napoleon's dreams of Eastern conquest, which at Tilsit he had shared with Alexander, had, in spite of the vast spaces dividing the Tsar's frontiers from those of the British flag, already begun to inspire in

170 The Eastern Question. Christian subjects of the Porte

English statesmen that fear of Russian designs upon India which was to become the main inspiration of the policy of Great Britain towards the Muscovite empire. Austria too, formerly the protagonist of Europe against the Turk, had changed her attitude under the menace of Russia's advance upon her flank. Nothing but her weakness would have suffered her to tolerate the virtual annexation of the Danubian principalities, which not only placed in the Tsar's keeping the key to the great waterway by which German commerce found its way to the Black Sea, but was regarded as only the first stage in an advance which would carry the Orthodox armies to the shores of the Bosphorus, absorbing the Slav population of the Balkan peninsula, and threatening with dissolution, if only by the force of racial and religious attraction, the loosely-knit monarchy of the Habsburgs. Nowhere was Metternich's policy of propping up mouldering institutions more necessary to Austria than in the Ottoman empire.

Apart even from the menace of Russia, the prospect of maintaining the integrity of Turkey seemed remote enough, and every sign pointed to its impending dissolution. Unlike the barbarian invaders of the Western empire, the Ottomans had never been absorbed in, or succeeded in absorbing, the peoples they had conquered; and their rule in Europe had continued to be what it was in the beginning, that of an alien invader encamped upon foreign soil. Moreover, between conquerors and conquered there were no avenues of sympathy, for between them lay the impenetrable barrier of creed. Islam was the code of the Ottoman State; but within this code there was no place for the unbeliever; and the conqueror of Constantinople had found in the Orthodox Church a convenient machinery for governing the mass of the subject populations whom his arms had failed to convert. Two theocracies, mutually contemptuous and exclusive, were thus established within the State; and the rival religions became the symbols of conflicting interests and ideals in every relation of life. To the Mussulman, his creed was the source and justification of his conscious pre-eminence ; to the Greek, Orthodoxy was the palladium of his national existence, and, since the shadow of the advance of Holy Russia had fallen upon the Ottoman empire, the sheet-anchor of his hopes and ambitions. Moreover, though this Christian State within the State was endowed with extensive privileges, it possessed, as against Islam, no rights. The Patriarch of Constantinople, as the responsible organ of the Sultan for the government of the Orthodox Church both in spiritual and temporal matters, exercised a wider power than he had enjoyed under the Byzantine Caesars; but his relation to the Sultan was, none the less, that of a slave. The same was true, in various degrees, of every Christian rayah. From the contemptuous tolerance of his conquerors he had obtained a greater measure of liberty than that enjoyed by dissidents in any other country in Europe. Catholics in Ireland and Protestants in Austria might envy