The Sun.
London, England, 1859-12-01 00:00:00

THE PAPAL STATES.

A very little study of history shows by what dis-
honest means those States were brought under the
Papal rule which, we are now profanely told, it is a
religious duty to preserve in their integrity. The
pretendqd donation by the Emperor Constantine of
the city of Rome and the country surrounding it to
the Holy See was doubted when it was first alleged,
and persons were punished with death in Rome for
expressing their suspicions; but modern researches
have caused the falsity of the deed to be acknow-
ledged, even by such writers as Bossuet. Pope
Zaccariah possessed himself of the chief cities
-of the
Exarchate, thereby defrauding the Emperor of the
East, the Sovereign to whom he owed allegiance.
Pope John VIII. presented to Louis 11. a forged act
of donation of the rich Abbey of St. Dionysius,
which he pretended had been executed in favour
of the Court of Rome by Charles the Bold ;
and Fleury tells us that Innocent 11. sent
a letter, to King Pepin of France, asking troops to
aid the Holy See, which letter, he averred, had
fallen from heaven, and was in the handwriting of
St. Peter. The crimes of Cesar Borgia, in later
times, added largely to the Papal territories. Bo-
logna was only united to them by the Treaty of
Vienna, in 1815, the Pope having only been before
suzerain of that city, which always sent an ambas-
sador to Rome in proof of its independent govern-
ment.
Various places that once belonged to the Court
of Rome have passed into other hands, without
any apparent scruple on the part of the Popes by
whom they were given up. Pius VII. signed at
Tolentino the treaty which gave the Romagna to
the first Napoleon, and apparently bore him no ill
will, for in his letter of the 4th of June, 1803, he
addresses him as " a second God."
If property once belonging to the church cannot
be alienated, then Avignon is still a town of the
Holy See ; also the left bank of the Po, and Tuscany
itself, formed part of the famous donation of the
Countess Matilda. The pretensions of the supreme
Pontiffs have gone on increasing with time. The
elections of the early Popes required the sanction of
the Emperor of the East to make them valid ; these
first Popes knelt before the Emperors of the East,
so did Stephen 111.,. Adrian, and Leo 111. to Pepin
and Charlemagne; but the indolence and supersti-
tion of reigning monarchs lent themselves to the
encroachments of priestly pride, till we find Boni-
face 111. proclaiming that the one Noah and the
one ark symbolised the one supreme power over all
things lodged in the Pope.
The disjointed States which contain the reluctant
populations ever rebelling against ecclesiastical
rule, who but wait an opportunity to throw off
that yoke, may be compressed by force for a
longer or a shorter tune; but the handwriting
is on the wall, and a Government which for
ages has had the moulding and tempering of
one of the finest races on earth now rules them
only t ecause its decrees are enforced by foreign
armies. M. Rayneval, the last defender of the
Roman Court, tells us " that reforms are impos-
sible, they would undermine the Government ;" and
it is true. Good government cannot exist under a
caste whose education and training place them
apart from other men, and who are wholly ignorant
of the duties -of the offices they arc called to -fill.
Some of the wisest among ecclesiastics have foreseen
that the unstable temporal throne of the Popes was
near its extinction.

It is believed that Gonsalviwould have secularised
the Papal rule; and Chateaubriand tells us that
Cardinal Bernetti thought he might altnest live to
seo the end. of the temporal sway of Rome. In a
letter from Cardinal Massimo to Marini, the gover-
nor of Rome in 1813, the original of which is now
to be seen in the hands of the Dictator of Bologna,
we find these words—ho is speaking of Ravenna,
where he was legate : " Excepting old men, women,
and children, and a very few terrified legitimists,
the whole population from the age of 18 upwards
are without exception hostile to the government."

The answer of Cardinal Marini advise-s
as the only
remedy for this condition of things increased vigi-
lance on the part of the police, and an addition to
their numbers. How such a state of feeling has
been produced is easily told ; the difficulty is for
Englishmen, living in a country where law is 'Ara-
mount to the will of the highest in tho land, to
realise that what we tell can indeed be true.

Military commissions for the speedy trial, or
rather condemnation, of political delinquents or sus-
pected delinquents, have sent hundreds of men to
exile, imprisonment, and some to death, without re-
gard to the ordinary forms of law ; the processes got,
up in such haste that at the speeial commission over
which Cardinal Rivaroli presided in 1825 a dead
man was condemned, and the very names of some
of the accused mistaken ; or other similar commis-
sions followed, which are well described by Massimo
d'Azeglio in the " Casi di Romagna ;" these commis-
sions are called" economical" (in via economica):
In 1836 the Pontifical Government wished to get
rid of its political prisoners, and an offer was made
to send them to Brazil, which was accepted by only
114 of the number. These persons were shipped
for Bahia, and after a voyage of 73 days were dis-
embarked there without money or resources. Men
have been condemned to 20 years' imprisonment
by a simple decree, conveyed by the police, without
trial—without even knowing why. Persons
accused are kept three, four, and five years in
prison before they are tried. There are thousands
of men in the States of the Church who are
under the surveillance of the police; these are
called precettati, or controllati. They must never
be out of their houses after dusk, not eat at a
tavern, and are liable to be visited by the police at
any hour of the day or night, and are exposed to a
thousand annoyances. The administration of civil
law is on a par with the criminal. The Inquisition,
too, plays its part in the drama of evil. It takes
cognizance of all real or pretended heresies. In a
notification issued by Cardinal Giacomo Giustiniani,
Bishop of Imola, dated June 3, 1828, there is the
following :
" Every one is bound within the space of 30 days to in-
form against those who have been guilty of blasphemy, or
of heretical propositions or words. Consequently those who,
obeying the laws of the church, shall comply with the ob-
ligation imposed by these presents, shall obtain indulgence
for ton years for every time they inform against a blas•
ph emor.
" We prefer to prevent evil rather than to punish the
guilty, but we declare that we shall proceed against such
crimes with all the rigour prescribed by the synodal consti-
tution on the simple testimony of one credible witness.
"The penalties established against blasphemers are—for
the first offence, condemnation to a fine of 25 gold crowns ;
for the second, 50; for the third, 100, and besides the crimi-
nal to be punished as infamous. If the delinquent be a
poor man, ono of the people (povero plebeo), he shall, for
the first offence, be compelled to appear as a penitent at the
door of the church for the space of a whole day; and in
case of a repetition of the offence he shall be whipped ; and
for a third relapse he shall have his tongue pierced, and be
sent to the galleys.
" Informers shall receive, besides ten years' indulgence,
one-third of the above-mentioned pecunial fine."
The Holy Office, as of old; selects the Jews as
peculiar objects of persecution. It cannot now burn
thorn, as in the palmy days of the Spanish Inquisi-
tion, but that the spirit remains the same may be
seen from the following edict of no earlier date
than 1843:--

" All the Israelites residing in Ancona and Sinigaglia
may no longer give food to Christians, nor receive Chris-
tia4s into their service, under pain of being punished ac-
cording to the Pontifical decrees.
"All the Israelites must sell, within the space of three
months, their moveables and other property, otherwise
their effects will be sold by auction.
" No Israelite may sleep out of the Ghetto ; no Israelite
may have friendly relations with Christians.
"The Israelites may not deal in holy ornaments, nor in
books of any kind, under a fine of 100 scudi and seven
years' imprisonment.
"The Israelites in burying their dead must not perform
any ceremony; they must not use lights under pain of
confiscation.
"Whoever shall violate the above edicts will incur the
pains of the Holy Inquisition.
"The present measure shall be communicated to the
Ghetto, that it may be published in Synagogue.
" Inquisitor-General SALUA."
There need no comments on words like these. Let
it be remembered that all is secret iu the Inquisition,
the witnesses are sworn to secrecy, no man knows
his accuser, and any one may be judged and con-
demned without knowing he is tried. The Inquisi-
tion is the last censor of the press, every printed
book must receive its approval, and it takes cognisance
of all books brought into the country, and punishes
those whohave forbidden works in their possession.
It watches over sins against the rules of the church
as to eating meat on the days when it is prohibited,
&c. On the 9th of February, 1857, an edict was
posted up at Rome condemning a woman named
Catherine Fanelli to 12 years' imprisonment for
pretending to have visions and to be a saint. The
taking of the child Mortara was an act of the In-
quisition, which is strictly an army of the priestly
government.
We might multiply ad iiyinitum instances of the
cruelty and folly. of the Roman Court. For the last
10 years it has almost exceeded its former cruelties,
sustained as it has been by Austrian bayonets. In
the town of Bologna alone, with 75,000 inhabitants,
186 persons were capitally executed in eight y ears,
from 1849 to 1857, besides an equal proportion in
the smaller towns of the Romagna by the simple au-
thority of a court-martial, presided over by an Aus-
trian officer, sometimes only a captain. Not unfre-
quently the crime which led to death was harbour-
ing suspected persons, or not giving the required
information as to where they were. The Pope had
virtually abdicated his throne to the Austrian Em-
peror, nor did he even retain mercy, that graceful
attribute of royalty—for no intercession of his ever
sought to prevent the slaughter of his subjects,
driven to despair by his own misgovernment and
that of his predecessors. There is no mercy in the
Court-of Rome.—Pctily News.