*
‘Was I being warned?’ Prospero wondered later.
Nicola shrugged. Bickering unnerved him. He had handed over the file.
‘We need men like you,’ Prospero said as he left. ‘By “we” I mean true Catholics. Liberal ones aren’t true ones.’ And with that he waved to his coachman and sped off in his well-sprung carriage.
Some months later, Nicola found this opinion spelled out in La Civiltà Cattolica and knew it to be policy. ‘Catholics,’ said the Vatican organ, unlike ‘Liberal Catholics’, hoped that the coming Council would dogmatise the Syllabus and define papal infallibility ‘by acclamation’; in other words, that the assembled bishops would passively acclaim what was read out to them.
This roused great anxiety and by summer the European episcopacy was showing strain. Pro-and anti-infallibilists differed with decorum, as befitted men of the cloth. Yet there was harshness and some panic in the copies of pastoral addresses, sermons, newspapers and synodal letters which bishops living outside the reach of the papal censor were free to order. Amandi took them all and soon the stacks, pro and con, had to be moved from his desk to the floor where they rose to his waist.
‘Pro’ was hortative. The Civiltà and its following argued for a definition by acclamation on the grounds that ‘the Holy Ghost needs no debate to make up His mind’.
In the other pile were the pained statements of men who knew their message to be unwelcome: historians who found that the doctrine, having been unknown to the early Church, had been later condemned as a heresy by one pope and discredited when another was branded a heretic by three ecumenical councils.
The Vicar-General was shocked. ‘These things should surely be forgotten,’ he argued, ‘in the interests of …’ ‘… a career?’
Charity had been the first casualty of the pamphlet-war. It was unfair to goad the Vicar-General who found the sheer sight of the climbing piles of pamphlets troubling to his faith. Challenging authority had never been our way. ‘We might as well be Protestants,’ he lamented to Nicola, who promised that nobody would hold it against him if he followed his conscience. But the Vicar-General’s conscience was a pendulum which had been given a push and whose giddiness tormented him. Extracting a paper, despite his better judgment, from the polemical ‘anti-’ pile, he learned that, as recently as 1826, the doctrine had been repudiated by the bishops of England and Ireland when their government questioned them about it on the eve of Catholic Emancipation. Had they lied then? If not, how could Manning now hold the opposite view? Anxiously, the Vicar-General circled the rising stacks and was to be seen sidling towards them with a crablike movement and a hovering hand which annoyed Mangialuce, who liked to sleep on them and had been known to hiss as the troubled cleric pulled out, then poked back in, papers in languages he didn’t know. It distressed him that the Dean of the Theological Faculty of Paris had attacked the doctrine and that the papacy’s old champion, Bishop Dupanloup of Orléans, advised against defining it. An unopened bundle of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, which nobody could read, was said to deliver a crushing historical criticism of the doctrine. This, though pseudonymous, was thought to be by the same Professor Ignaz von Döllinger as had fingered the new Saint Peter d’Arbuez. Peering at the devilish-looking German script, the Vicar General shook his head and, once, Nicola saw him put his nose to it, as if sniffing for sulphur.
*
But perhaps Mastai would not try to bring in the doctrine? His Bull convoking the Council made no mention of it. It was possible that, having tested the waters, he would judiciously desist.
*
Not every skirmish in the paper-war was represented in Amandi’s files. Some news reached Imola only as hearsay, like the report of the secret letter which fourteen German bishops had sent His Holiness, warning that to dogmatise the doctrine would cause havoc in Germany, where Catholics had to live with Protestants.
Roman reactions to this were waspish – for why give thought to Germany when it was Rome which was in danger, Rome, the caput mundi, the head without which the limbs could not function?
Letters echoing the debates going on in presbyteries up and down the land went into neither pile. These Amandi burned from concern for his correspondents’ safety and because of admissions which they might one day prefer to forget.
Noble motives mixed with trivial ones. Coveted privileges, such as the right to deck one’s carriage horses with tassels, would be risible the day there was no court. Rome had seen the agony of too many courts – the Stuarts had ended up there as had several Bonapartes and the Bourbons of Naples – to be deceived on this score.
German abstraction got on Roman nerves. Abstraction, as anyone with pastoral experience knew, meant nothing to the body of the faithful, but the panoply of liturgy spoke to the heart and eye. And that included tassels! Absolutely! Yes! Ritual, a ladder to heaven, manifested the transcendent in ways the multitude could apprehend. A mirror in a dark shaft, it caught the light!
‘But if we’re found to be telling lies,’ worried the Vicar-General, ‘about history and so forth, might that provoke a schism?’
‘You’ve touched the hic,’ said Amandi, ‘the hic est quaestio.’
*
All summer clerics discussed the odds. Might a strengthened pope even now save the city? Mastai was known to think so. Alternatively, might the Council offer a chance for reform?
‘Think,’ said Amandi, ‘of all those churchmen from across the globe gathering here for the first time ever! Surely something unlooked for may happen? The Holy Spirit is not a caged bird.’
Rome, 1869
December slid damply in. It had been raining for weeks. The city gleamed like wrinkled silk and, outside Nicola’s window, bright red unpicked persimmons rotted prettily. Reaching Rome late, he and the cardinal found their major-domo eager to let out rooms and arguing that there were fortunes to be made. Foreign bishops had come in unforeseen numbers and the cerimonieri were at their wits’ end. Convents and private palazzi were brimful. To be sure, one must pick and choose. One foreign archbishop was said to have a ring in his nose and another had disconcerted his host by pissing on the floor! Council Fathers had come from places whose names, even mangled on Roman lips, had the ring of legend. Mexico, for instance, was where Emperor Maximilien had so wretchedly perished, and it was just three years since his demented Empress had trailed her folly through Vatican antechambers, imploring help for what had once been presented as a Crusade. The spectacle had disquieted a population attuned to omens and signs.
When Prospero called, he found the cardinal nursing a chill and his cat, shaken by the outrage of a travelling basket, crouching beneath a chiffonier. From here its offended amber eyes blinked suspicion at the caller.
He and Nicola went for a stroll.
The streets were crowded, vehicles entangled and a docile old horse, on being obliged to back and bump its rump, suddenly reared and rolled the whites of its eyes. Foreign priests leaned from the windows of their conveyances, crying ‘Quid, quid?’ in a Latin so alien that people did not know it for Latin at all.
Prospero remarked that the Council too would be a Tower of Babel and the Fathers – over seven hundred of them – could come under the wrong influence. ‘Democracy could raise its hydra head.’
They walked through fine rain. ‘So the steam engine,’ quipped Nicola, ‘by bringing us so many outsiders has justified Pope Gregory’s fears. Chemin de fer, chemin d’enfer! An infallible instinct? Is the doctrine to be defined?’
‘Oh, its opponents saw to that! Their vehemence was a tactical mistake. Now, we must show the world that the Church is united.’ Prospero laughed. ‘Quod inopportunum dixerunt necessarium fecerunt.’
‘But they were provoked!’ Nicola protested. ‘The Civiltà said the doctrine should be defined by acclamation! That would turn the Council into a rubber stamp!’
‘And they took the bait. Admit it was a clever move.’ Playfully squeezing Nicola’s elbow. ‘Here’s the man behin
d it.’
They had reached the piazza Scossacavalli and here, in the doorway of the Palazzo dei Convertendi, headquarters of the Civiltà, stood Father Grassi, who was soon speaking with such candour that Nicola guessed his own loyalty must have been vouched for. He felt discomfort but had no chance to say so. Time, it seemed, pressed, for the sheep, said Grassi, must be quickly sorted from the goats. Today there was to be a meeting at Archbishop Manning’s to decide who should be voted onto the commissions which would manage the Council. No votes must on any account go to Liberal bishops – goats. To prevent this, Manning would draw up a single list of candidates for each commission, then get all our friends to vote for it.
‘The meeting is at three and we have still to make a list of Spanish nominees.’ Away he raced.
Prospero smiled. ‘The English know how to spike democracy’s guns. Grassi’s taking lessons.’
The rain had grown heavier, so they hugged the wall. Pinned to a church door, a notice declared a book made up from the articles in the Allgemeine Zeitung to be on the Index. Lines were being drawn. Yesterday, early arrivals among the Council Fathers had been addressed by the Pope and a Brief read out, laying down the rules of procedure. Some, said Prospero over his shoulder, were upset. They had expected to draw up their own rules like at Trent. ‘An absurd idea! Trent lasted years and we haven’t got years. We’re near my place. May I offer you lunch?’
Nicola accepted and the two walked up a spacious stone stairway which had lately been used as a privy. Escutcheons with the arms of the palazzo’s successive owners decorated the walls.
Over the meal, he learned that some foreign bishops had expressed resentment at the Pope’s setting the agenda. Others jibbed at having to obtain permission before leaving Rome, at their post being censored, and at the ban on printing anything to do with the Council. What did they expect, exclaimed Prospero. ‘It’s not a parliament, after all!’
‘But earlier Councils were more free!’
‘Oh, Councils have a turbulent history, which is why we plan to keep this one in control.’ It should not be difficult, explained Prospero, for about three hundred foreigners were to be the Pope’s boarders, kept here at his expense. They would hardly bite the hand that fed them! Curial cardinals too would be reluctant to show disloyalty.
Then he made a suggestion. Nicola, whose opinions would be assumed to coincide with Amandi’s, should let people go on thinking this. It would be useful to His Holiness to have someone privy to the cabals of the Liberal Minority. ‘Simply pretend to be one of them. To be sure,’ Prospero admitted, ‘voting will be public. But by the time a significant vote reveals your true allegiance, you will be able to claim that the Holy Spirit led you to change it. Indeed, this could usefully influence other waverers.’
‘I am not a waverer, Monsignore!’
‘I’m sorry. Look, Nicola, it was a lapsus. I only meant …’
‘That you can handle me! You think that of the whole Council. You and your friends plan to run it by trickery. Well, perhaps you can, Monsignore, but I shan’t help you.’ Nicola, who had not meant to say any of this, felt his anger rising. As he stood up, his chair fell, knocked something over and brought things to a head, since now he must either apologise or storm out. He stormed out.
*
In the street, his temper was doused by the rain. Dodging from doorway to doorway, he had leisure to reflect that, not only had he said uncharitable things, he had made a tactical error. With hindsight, he should have accepted the role of traitor. After all, he need not play it. Instead, by staying friends with both sides, he could work for a reconciliation. The chance to do this had come his way – and must be got back. Painful or not, he must apologise. If he did not, some other bishop would be asked to betray the Liberals – and would do so. How, he wondered now, had he come to lose his temper? He had, just a while before, been feeling close to Prospero who had been speaking with passion and looking like his younger self. Humanity, he had warned, could be driven to despair. We were at the hub of things at a pivotal moment. ‘It’s like France in 1789,’ he had argued over the crostini, then developed this analogy over the rice, the roast eel, and the veal in Madeira sauce. Look at the parallels! No money in the Treasury, the monarch seeking support from the notables and they, namely us, thinking of their own interests. ‘You don’t think, do you, that the devil talks with a devilish voice? He talks about rights and episcopal privilege. Lucid and persuasive arguments led to 1789 and we are approaching the 1789 of the Church.’
Nicola, granting that there might be something to this, let his friend work at winning him over and realised, as he felt himself expand in the glow of his attentiveness, how he had been missing their closeness. Possibly, he had seemed more sympathetic than he was. Encouraged, Prospero, having lined up all his points, turned, at the pudding, to the latest pasquinades.
Their butt was Bishop Dupanloup whose entourage of seven priests and many mounds of baggage had astounded the papal Customs. ‘He travels like an Egyptian bey and one can but wonder who pays. Could it be the French Emperor?’ The guess was perfidious. Dupanloup was staying at the Villa Grazioli. ‘He’s miles from the centre, which isn’t lost on the wags. “Who”, runs a joke, “is the most ex-centric bishop? The furthest from grace?” They’ve Latinised his name to “De pavone lupus”, implying that from a peacock vanity come wolfish ways or that he is the product of a mismatch …’
‘This is low!’ Nicola was indignant at the reference to the French bishop’s being a by-blow of the House of Rohan. The ‘wag’, it struck him, was probably Prospero himself.
‘I’m preparing you,’ said Prospero, ‘for the zoo which Rome now is – a place where the dove must deal with lupine peacocks.’ Then he made his proposal.
Monsignor Santi to Monsignor Stanga:
Monsignore,
I hope you will forgive my intemperance today. Your proposal caught me unprepared. Thinking it over, I see that mine was a worldly reaction and out of place.
Perhaps you will give me some days to think. Then I can give you a more pondered reply. Yours in J.C.
Nicola + Bishop of Trebizond
Rome, 8 December 1869
It was the feast of the Immaculate Conception: a day of rain and rising muck. Bells had pealed for an hour and the Council’s opening had been announced by a roar of canon from the Castel Sant’Angelo, whose name commemorated an angel’s appearance centuries before. The angel had been sheathing a sword and perhaps today’s swords too might be sheathed? Not everyone hoped for this. The young and buoyant rather favoured the red shirts, but were ready, for now, to enjoy the current show.
Eighty thousand people had squeezed into the basilica where few could hope to glimpse as much as a mitre.
Rain had curtailed the ceremony, but the procession was impressive, as over seven hundred Council Fathers in silver copes assembled above St Peter’s Portico, then descended the Royal Staircase. They were followed by the Pope, borne high on his sede gestatoria surrounded by fan-bearers. Passing St Peter’s statue, they moved up the aisle – by now deep in a slush of mud – towards the high altar where the host was exposed behind the bronze columns of Bernini’s baldacchino. God, ran a whisper, was doubly present: as Pius-Deus and in the consecrated wafer.
Mastai’s revelling voice rang out in a strong chant; then the procession turned into the right transept which was to be the Council Chamber. It measured forty-five meters by twenty and through its opened doors the faithful glimpsed cushioned seats – green for bishops and red for cardinals – arranged lengthwise down the aisle.
Mass was celebrated. Then a bishop from Trent, site of the last Council, delivered a greeting. There was a rumour that he had been promised a cardinal’s hat if he would urge his fellows to define the controversial doctrine. Straining to hear, they realised that the aula’s acoustics were nil. What had he said?
The Pope chanted ‘Adsumus Domine, here we are, oh Holy Spirit, gathered in Your name, though in the fetters of sin … Do
not allow us to betray justice …’
The music thrummed on. How many hours more? A-a-a-a-a-a-a-amen and again amen! Seasoned in ceremony, did prelates here mentally hibernate? Certainly, their torpid minds feared lively ones – hence their dislike of Germans. Bishop Dupanloup of Orléans, by visiting Germany last summer, had incurred some of this. Just now, in the robing room, Cardinal Pitra, looking like a wizened choirboy, had sidled up to him to hiss in his face: ‘Wissenschaft, Monsignore! Wissenschaft!’ Perhaps he took it for a vice or a disease? His teeth were black-veined and yellow like a clutch of wasps.
Dupanloup prayed for humility – yet, felt that politics could be forced on a man. Two months ago he had gone to see Louis Napoleon at Saint Cloud. The Emperor did not relish Mastai’s bullying of French bishops. If provoked, he might again withdraw his troops and this time the consequences could be fatal. Feeling him out, Dupanloup had concluded that the threat was real. Paradoxically, this made it harder to stand up to Mastai. For how hand him over to his enemies?
Yet the Pope himself failed to see that public opinion in France must be appeased. Indeed once, when Dupanloup mentioned this, he had said, ‘Ah, you mean the rabble? Do you suggest, Monseigneur, that God’s Vicar should bow to their whims?’
‘No, Santità, but in Paris …’
The Paris rabble, said Mastai, was worse than our own. Two Archbishops of that city had been murdered in the last twenty years! ‘Things go in threes! You should warn your friend Darboy!’ And, horrifyingly, the fat old pontiff had begun to giggle. ‘The rabble may get him too if he tries using it against us.’ It was heartbreaking. Was senility now the norm here? ‘Wissenschaft!’ The spittly cardinal could have been cleaning his mouth.
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