Pio Nono - Softcover

E. E. Y. Hales

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1622921038 ISBN 13: 9781622921034

Verlag: Loreto Publications, 2016

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Even though the duration of his papal reign has since been eclipsed by that of Pope John Paul II, at the time of his death in 1878 Pope Pius IX had served as pope longer than any pope besides Saint Peter. His papacy, from 1846 until 1878, was the political and religious pivot-point of the nineteenth century. He was elected pope as the candidate of the politically liberal party in the College of Cardinals. By liberal here we mean those who were sympathetic generally towards the new republican and anti-monarchical leanings of so many leaders and thinkers in those post-enlightenment years; but the violent revolutions of 1848 convinced him that the liberals had far more than merely political ends in mind. In fact, he now believed that the destruction of the Church was their ultimate goal, and for many of the leaders, it was. Because of that, he became, although not by his choice, a political as well as a religious warrior. Because the position that Pio Nono inherited as Pope was that not only of the universal shepherd of the faithful and vicar of Christ, but also that of a temporal Prince and sovereign, the task of leadership before him was inextricably intertwined with political and revolutionary affairs. The great battles of church and state that dominated that century were, by the grace of God, his to fight. Mr. Hales beautifully and faithfully tells us the story of that battle and Blessed Pio Nono s part in it. Preface Why, since his death in 1878, has no study appeared in England of Pio Nono? Perhaps because he was a Pope. Yet this seems an insufficient answer since he was also a leading character at first the leading character in that drama so dear to Englishmen, the Italian Risorgimento. And even as Pope he forced himself upon the attention of Englishmen in his day by his papal aggression in restoring the Catholic hierarchy to England, by issuing the Syllabus of Errors, by defining papal infallibility, by enraging both Gladstone and Exeter Hall, by reigning longer than any Pope had ever reigned, by recruiting an international army, and by losing the most ancient sovereignty of Europe, the Papal States. In an important sense Pio Nono was the central figure of the mid-nineteenth century. We name epochs after their political arbiters. We talk of Metternich s Europe, and Bismarck s Europe, so that the period between the flight of Metternich in 1848 and the foundation of the German Empire in 1870 becomes Napoleon III s Europe, or Palmerston s if, with Shakespeare, we were to choose for our title the suffering tragic hero, the symbolic central character, then the middle of the century would be called the age of Pio Nono for the same reasons as Shakespeare called his plays King Lear or Othello, rather than Goneril or Iago. Those who were working for change, or for power, assailed the Pope s claims, and brushed him aside; but they could not prevent the eyes of a world-wide audience being fastened upon the stage of his misfortunes. Nor could they stop him from rekindling, in his old age, flames of fervor that have burnt ever since around the world. The recent appearance in Europe of two major publications concerned with Pio Nono is a reminder of our own neglect. One is R. Aubert s Pontificat de Pie Neuf, which is a history of the Catholic Church in this pontificate. The other is the correspondence of Pio Nono with Victor Emmanuel and Napoleon III, and of Cardinal Antonelli with the papal nuncios, between the years 1847 and 1863. P. Pirri, who has edited this correspondence, has performed a very important service the more so since the papers at the Vatican belonging to the period of Pius IX remain inaccessible to the historian.

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