'Sic transit gloria mundi'

Prisoner of the Vatican

The Popes' Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State

David I. Kertzer

Houghton Mifflin Company, $26,341 pp.

It seems impossible to date the precise moment when European civilization became "modern," "liberal," "secular." A host of potential candidates vie as symbols to mark the birth of "modernity." Luther's protest, Renaissance naturalism, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, Marx's materialism, Darwin's Origin of Species--all claim thoughtful advocates who suggest each had a primacy in ushering in a new order. Next to these grand intellectual and political events, the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 and its conquest of Papal Rome in 1870 hardly merits notice. The kingdom, ever posturing to be, and hoping to become, a great power, was in fact a minor player in the nineteenth-century scheme of things. The peninsula's meager natural resources, ethno-cultural diversity, abiding provincial loyalties, weak national identity, and failed colonial ventures were not the resources from which national greatness might emerge.

But, in the dominant Catholic philosophy of history, the Risorgimento (the unification of Italy) and its "sacrilegious usurpation" of the pope-king's dominions ranked high as a marker of the treacherous, apostate modern world. Liberal modernity and its consequent secularization, the papacy and Catholic apologists before Vatican II taught, had one single demonic ancestry: Satan's revolt against God. It took institutional form in the Protestant Reformation from which other modern revolutions followed as the Evil One expanded his earthly dominions. A crucial diabolical manifestation in this sinful chain of events was the conquest of the Papal States and Papal Rome. The center of civilization itself, Rome, fell to the Enemy, and the ability of the papacy to work for the restoration of Christ the King to his rightful place required first the restoration of his vicar to his divinely ordained kingdom centered in Rome.

The altogether earthly quest to regain Papal Rome is the subject of David I. Kertzer's lively new book. After the fall of Papal Rome, Pius IX (1846-78) proclaimed himself a "prisoner" within the Italian kingdom that embodied all that was wrong with liberalism and modernity. He called on the reluctant European Catholic powers to "liberate" him from the "sectarian" enemies of God, and to restore his patrimony. After excommunicating, repeatedly, all those involved in the Italian "revolution," and forbidding Catholics to run for office and vote in national elections in the wicked new state, Pius awaited God's hidden hand to overthrow the kingdom. From the perspective of many Italian statesmen, Pius IX and Leo XIII (1878-1903) were dangerous extremists, who recklessly sought to destroy the Kingdom of Italy by any means, welcoming European war and violence if it might serve their reactionary purposes.

Notwithstanding the subtitle of this intriguing study, there was not one "secret plot" to regain Papal Rome. There were, rather, several dynamics that both Pius and Leo regularly set in motion, which they hoped would instigate the downfall of the Kingdom of Italy. First, both vicars of the Prince of Peace welcomed the prospect of a European conflagration in which Italy would collapse in the face of Prussian, or French, or Austrian power, and the victor might restore the Papal States. Scenarios and alignments in this scheme constantly shifted over the decades from 1860 to 1890. For instance, in 1866 when Italy and Prussia fought Austria, culminating in Italy's annexation of Venetia, Pius IX cast Austria as the champion of the pope-king. Sadly for Pius, Prussia defeated Austria and foiled his hopes. Leo's secretary of state, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, reached out to France in the 1880s to cast its lot with the papacy and eliminate the Italian enemy. The papal offensive failed once again. Another scenario envisioned a republican revolution that would bring down the fragile Italian monarchy and compel conservative European states to intervene and reestablish the temporal power of the pope to preserve order. "Remarkably," Kertzer explains, in 1881 "Vatican officials had indeed been secretly discussing the possibility of encouraging a republican revolt in Italy as a way to regain control of Rome."

Papal threats to leave Rome, though, were the most popular strategy to destabilize the church's nemesis. The Kingdom of Italy expended tremendous energy trying to convince the Great Powers that the pope was free, secure, and independent in Rome. The Law of Guarantees, passed unilaterally by the Italian government in 1871, was meant to provide that assurance. Still, the Vatican constantly sought to belie this claim in order to inflame Catholic populations to pressure their governments to support the papacy, and to compel European states to restore the pope's dominions. In 1870, for instance, Pius considered fleeing Rome while Italian statesmen offered him concessions to keep him in Rome. Pius, with dramatic flair, declined the Italian offer and performed his role as a prisoner on an international stage.