From Publishers Weekly
"Modern Italy was founded... over the dead body of Pope Pius IX," writes Kertzer, author of the National Jewish Book Award–winning The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (also a National Book Award finalist), in this riveting and fast-paced chronicle of the rise of the Italian state and the Vatican's forgotten battle against the nationalists to retain power over Rome. In 1870, Victor Emmanuel II, king of a newly united Italy, sought an agreement with Pius IX in which the pope would rule the Tiber's right bank while the king would govern the left bank. When the pope rejected this arrangement, Italian troops seized power in Rome and Pius IX sought refuge in the Vatican palaces, declaring himself a prisoner. Led by Garibaldi and aided by Catholic France, the nationalists gained control in 1878, and so angered were nationalists at Pius IX that in 1881 protesters almost succeeded in dumping his corpse into the Tiber. The animosity between the pope and the state continued until 1929, when Mussolini and the Vatican signed a concordat in which the Vatican recognized the legitimacy of the Italian state and the Vatican was granted the rights of a sovereign state. Kertzer, given access to newly opened Vatican archives, tells a first-rate tale of the political intrigues and corrupt characters of a newly emerging nation, offers history writing at its best, and provides insight into a little-known chapter in religious and political history. 16 pages of b&w photos, 5 maps. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Another illuminating papal chronicle from the author of The Popes against the Jews (2001).When the Papal States were conquered and Italy was first unified as a nation in 1861, the pope, and consequently the Roman Catholic Church, lost land, influence, and power. Basing his research on recently recovered Vatican documents, Kertzer recounts how both Pope Pius IX and his successor, Pope Leo XIII, colluded with other members of the clergy and with rival European powers in an unsuccessful effort to dismantle the new Italian State and seize Rome. Proclaiming himself a "prisoner of the Vatican" in 1870, Pius IX undertook what would become for himself and subsequent pontiffs a 59-year exile within the confines of the Vatican. Populated with a colorful cast of authentic historical figures, this fascinating slice of papal and Italian history will intrigue and enlighten both scholars and the merely curious. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Kertzer. . .offers history writing at its best, and provides insight into a little-known chapter in religious and political history."


Book Description
We think of Italy as an ancient nation, but in fact the unified Italian state was born only in the nineteenth century — and only against the adamant refusal of the pope to relinquish his rule of Rome. In this riveting chronicle of international intrigue, the renowned historian David Kertzer delves into secret Vatican archives to reveal a venomous conflict that kept the pope a self-imposed prisoner of the Vatican for more than fifty years. King Victor Emmanuel, his nemesis Garibaldi, the French emperor Napoleon III, England, Spain, Germany, Austria, and even America play a part in this astonishing drama. On September 20, 1870, the king's battle to unite the disparate Italian states came to a head when his troops broke through the walls of Rome, which the pope had ruled for centuries. Pope Pius IX, ensconced with the Vatican Council, denounced the usurpers and plotted with his advisers to regain power or else flee Italy altogether. A dramatic struggle unfolded over the next two decades, pitting church against state and the nations of Europe against one another. This is a story of outrageous accusations, mutual denunciations, raucous demonstrations, frenetic diplomacy, and secret dealings. Rocks were hurled along with epithets, and war across Europe seemed inevitable. The antagonists were as explosive as the events. Pius IX, the most important pontiff in modern history, engineered the doctrine of papal infallibility but ended his days reviled and denounced. The blustering Victor Emmanuel schemed behind the backs of his own ministers. Garibaldi, Italy's dashing national hero, committed naive and dangerous mistakes. Beyond Italy, the pope"s main protector, Napoleon III, was himself being taken prisoner. This devastating conflict, almost entirely unknown until now, still leaves a deep mark on the Italian soul. No one who reads David Kertzer's revelatory account will ever think of Italy or the Vatican in quite the same way again.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction:Italy"s Birth and Near DemiseModern Italy, it could be said, was founded over the deadbody of Pope Pius IX. Although Italy had been a geographical labelsince Roman times, the idea that a distinctive Italian people inhabitedthe boot-shaped peninsula and its islands was more recent, and the notionthat they should have an independent state of their own more recentstill. Only with the French Revolution"s attack on the principles ofabsolutism and divinely ordained hierarchy could such an idea gainground, and only with the rise of nationalism as the political creed ofthe nineteenth century could "Italy for the Italians" become the newwatchword. But creating a sense of common Italian identity among thepeople of the peninsula was no easy matter. Not only were they not accustomed to being part of the same country, few of them spoke Italian,97 percent speaking a kaleidoscope of dialects and languages that werein good part mutually unintelligible.In the aftermath of Napoleon"s defeat in 1814, the Italian nationalistmovement faced a peninsula that was divided into a patchwork ofstates and duchies propped up by foreign forces, the Austrian empireforemost among them. But the nationalists were not entirely discouraged,for they knew that autocratic mini-states were vulnerable to thewrath of their subjects from within and to armies from without. Assorteddukes and kings had painfully learned the latter lesson whenNapoleon"s armies had, not many years earlier, swept through the peninsulaand deposed them all. For Italy"s nationalists, then, the mostdaunting obstacle was not the Austrian occupation of northeastern It-aly, nor the tottering Bourbon monarchy that ruled all of the Southand Sicily, nor the assorted dukes and their duchies. No, there was a fargreater power, a far more imposing foe, one that cut the peninsulain two, blocking North from South, its capital the legendary city ofRomulus and Remus, the symbol of Italy"s ancient greatness.For more than a thousand years the popes had ruled over these PapalStates, a swath of territory that extended from Rome northwardthrough Umbria and the Marches to Ferrara and Bologna. Deposingthe duke of Modena or the grandduke of Tuscany, or even driving theAustrians out of Lombardy and Veneto, was one thing. Deposing thepope from his thousand-year earthly reign was something very different,for the pope, though having little in the way of military might, hadweapons that no other ruler could ever hope to wield.What the pope had was the belief — enshrined in official Churchdogma and pronounced by parish priests throughout the land — thathe ruled over a divinely ordained kingdom as God"s representative onearth. The creation of a unified Italian state, the pope insisted — and inthis he had centuries of Church teachings to back him up — was contraryto God"s wishes. It could only be accomplished by force, and anyonetaking part in such an assault would be throwing in his lot with theDevil himself. There could be no place in the Church, or in Heavenabove, for such agents of evil.In some ways, the task that the pope faced in battling the Italian nationalistswas nothing new. True, modern nationalism was a recent development.But ever since popes became kings in the early MiddleAges, they had to fend off challenges from civil rulers who sought to reducetheir authority, if not to seize their land. In such cases, the pontiffsinevitably cast their battle as a struggle pitting the forces of Godagainst those of the Devil, the forces of darkness against those of light.But rarely did they limit themselves to such otherworldly arguments,recognizing the benefits of marshaling more terrestrial forces to theirside as well. If the popes held on to their Italian lands over centuries inwhich other regimes and other states rose and fell and other bordersshifted, it was also because they became masters of playing on the rivalriesof Europe"s secular rulers.And here we get to one of the embarrassing facts of Italian unification:it first came about, in 1859–1860, only through the assistance of aforeign army, the French, who helped drive the Austrians from thepeninsula. It was completed, with the taking of Rome in 1870, onlywhen Pope Pius IX"s former foreign protectors — Europe"s two majorCatholic powers, the French and the Austrians — decided, for differentreasons, to abandon him to his fate. But still the newly unified Italy wasa tenuous creature, born not of a mass nationalist movement — for relativelyfew Italians were involved, or even seemed to care(1)— but of afortunate coincidence of a small nationalist elite, an opportunisticSavoyard monarchy based in Turin in the northwest of the peninsula, amicroscopic ragtag army under the command of a popular hero deeplydistrusted by the emerging Italian government, and a series of Europeanrivalries that prevented any of the continent"s powers from heedingthe pope"s desperate pleas.Italians — but also others who learn about Italian history today —are led to believe that the nation was securely established once Romewas taken in 1870. But it is an illusion, the product of a natural tendencyto view history backward. In fact, in the first two decades ofRome"s new position as capital of Italy, there was no certainty that theend of the Papal States was any less fleeting than it had been severaldecades earlier, when, in the course of ten years, Napoleon deposedtwo popes and chased them from Rome. Nor did Catholics have tolook back even that far to find grounds for hope; little more than twodecades earlier, in 1848, popular revolts had driven Pius IX, then in thefirst years of his papacy, into exile. Then, too, the usurpers had triumphantlypronounced the permanent end of papal rule. Yet, once again,the pope had shown how fleeting were the victories of the Church"s enemies,returning to power behind the French and Austrian armies.Why, loyal Catholics asked, should God"s cause not triumph oncemore? Was He not still on the pope"s side?When, on September 20, 1870, Italian troops finally broke throughRome"s walls and claimed the city as part of the new Italian state, Piusproclaimed himself a "prisoner of the Vatican." Denouncing the"usurper" state, he retreated into the Vatican complex and, spurningthe government"s entreaties, refused to come out. Confident that Godwould not long abandon His Church, Pius did all he could to help thedivine cause, from excommunicating Italy"s founders — the king, hisministers, and his generals — to calling on Europe"s Catholic rulers tocome once again to his aid. Following the pope"s lead, the Catholicpress assured its readers that Rome"s sacrilegious conquerors would,like their predecessors, soon meet an ignominious end. The PapalStates would return.A dramatic battle unfolded, the drama punctuated by the death ofits two protagonists — Pius IX and Victor Emmanuel II — within amonth of each other in 1878. Yet, even with a new pope, Leo XIII, and anew king, Umberto I, both dramatically different from their predecessors,the battle continued, the stakes high, the outcome uncertain.This is the story told in the pages that follow, a story of outrageousaccusations, mutual denunciations, terrible fears, and raucous publicdemonstrations, a chronicle of frenetic diplomacy and secret dealings.While the struggle was partly fought through symbols, ritual, and rhetoric,rocks were hurled along with epithets. War throughout Europewas prophesied, at the end of which, many in the Vatican hoped andbelieved, Italy would once again be carved up by foreign powers into aseries of weak, dependent states and the pope returned to power inRome. This battle — almost entirely unknown today outside scholarlycircles — still leaves a deep mark on the Italian soul. Without understandingthis history, there is no way to understand the peculiarities ofItaly today.The protagonists of this fateful conflict live on in statues of graniteand marble that dot town squares from Venice and Turin to Naples andPalermo, in elaborate tombs, famous paintings, and obscure popularart. Rome itself is filled with outsized monuments, statues big andsmall, and a panoply of plaques commemorating the battles of unification.But, oddly, the story that they tell, together with the sanitized accountsfound in the textbooks of every Italian schoolchild, has ratherlittle to do with what happened. The actual history is, today, too dangerous,too embarrassing, still too raw for public view. The most basicfact of the creation of modern Italy — that its greatest foe was the popehimself — is one that cannot easily be mentioned, and certainly not tochildren, whose understanding of how their country was founded containsa hole at its center. The Italian or the foreigner visiting Rome todaycan scarcely grasp what the battles for Italian unification wereabout.It is too bad, because the true story of the birth of modern Italy, involvingthe demise of the Papal States and the pope"s efforts to undoItalian unification, offers a gripping tale of intrigue and pathos filledwith outsized characters and high drama. It features an Italian king,Victor Emmanuel II, whose greatest passion in life was hunting andwho viewed his government ministers with disdain, but who somehowrose to the challenge of unifying Italy. Although he had little love forthe Church or the clergy, the king never stopped dreaming of the daythat the pope would deign to receive him. It was a day that he wouldnever live to see.For his part, Pius IX was without doubt the most important pontiffin modern history. While deeply religious, he was politically inept. Remarkably gregarious, he loved nothing more than hosting audiencesand, before Rome was taken, strolling through Rome"s streets andchuckling at people"s startled reactions to the white-robed pope-kingin their midst. Yet, if he was a man of great charm and warmth, a manwith a famous smile, he also had a fearful temper and a short fuse. And,as if from the cast of a twopenny melodrama, ever at the goodly pope"sside was the dark figure of Giacomo Antonelli, long his secretary ofstate, his right-hand man, who compensated for the pope"s lack of politicalsophistication with his own diplomatic savvy. A cardinal withoutever having been ordained a priest, Antonelli fit the popular stereotypeof the goodly pope"s evil adviser, an image promulgated in this case notonly by Italy"s anticlericals and nationalists but by many of the Curia"scardinals as well, jealous of the stranglehold Antonelli seemed to haveover Pius.Rounding out the cast of characters at the center of this dramatichistory as it began to unfold, and whose true role in the rise of modernItaly is today obscured from popular view, is Giuseppe Garibaldi, aman for whom "colorful" seems too weak a term. Condemned to deathas a young man for taking part in a nationalist uprising in Genoa,he spent most of his early adult and middle-age years in exile as asailor, adventurer, and frequent participant in popular uprisings, includinga series of wars in South America, where he had taken refuge.When, in the face of a popular revolt, Pius IX fled Rome in 1848 andthe end of papal rule was proclaimed, Garibaldi returned to Italy tolead the makeshift army that defended the new Roman Republic. Yetwhen the French responded to the pope"s plea and sent their troops toretake Rome, Garibaldi, despite all his heroic efforts, could not longhold them back and was forced into exile once again. Almost singlehandedlyresponsible for the fact that the new Italian state that tookshape in 1860 included Sicily and the entire Italian South — not a partof the peninsula in which Victor Emmanuel or his ministers had anyinterest — Garibaldi lacked all political artifice. Yet he did have one unshakable belief: he was convinced that the priests were a parasiticscourge on the Italian nation, the papacy a cancer that had to be excised.And then there were all the foreign rulers and diplomats whose decisionswould determine whether the pope would one day return topower, whether Italy would remain united or soon crumble. There wasthe massive, mustachioed Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellorwho presided over what by late 1870 had emerged as the continent"sleading power. Bismarck"s six-foot, four-inch frame and considerablebulk would cast a large shadow over Europe in these years, inspiring amixture of respect, anger, and fear. With a huge head, a shrinkingfringe of whitening hair, a drooping mustache, bushy eyebrows, andlarge protruding eyes, Bismarck carried himself with military bearingand, indeed, always wore a white military uniform in Berlin as befitteda member of the Prussian gentry who held the rank of major general.Also, befitting his origins, he despised urban life, retreating as much aspossible to his rural estates. Known to sit down for a meal and eat whatwould normally feed three men and to drink one or two bottles ofchampagne at his midday meal alone, he was apt to smoke his waythrough eight or ten Havana cigars a day and cap off his dinner with abottle or two of brandy.Disdaining any crass appeal for popularity, in his nearly three decadesin power Bismarck confined his speeches almost entirely to parliament.His voice came as a surprise to those who had never heard him,for the big man spoke in something of a thin falsetto. Yet, when he wasspotted ordering a mug of beer from a parliamentary aide — a suresign that he was getting ready to mount the podium — word spreadquickly, and the deputies rushed in from the halls to hear him. Bismarck"sspeeches were typically witty, sardonic, sarcastic, and — althoughhe rarely used a prepared text — filled with rarefied literary allusions.Of his subordinates he expected information but not advice,still less criticism. If Pius IX"s angry outbursts were entirely spontaneousand fleeting, Bismarck"s were more calculated. "It"s useful for theentire mechanism if I get angry at times," he said. "It puts strongersteam in the engine." Although he would soon lead Germany"s owncampaign against the Catholic Church, Bismarck — himself, like theGerman emperor, a Protestant — was above all a political opportunist.As we shall see, at one point he even toyed with the idea of providing aGerman refuge for the pope and pronouncing Germany the world centerof Catholicism.(2)Then there was Napoleon III, emperor of France. Born in 1808, sevenyears before Bismarck, Louis Napoleon grew up in the wake of his uncleand namesake"s bitter defeat. A participant in the Italian nationalistuprisings in 1831, he was arrested nine years later in France for conspiringto overthrow the monarchy there. Escaping from prison after sixyears, he took part in the French revolt of 1848 and by the end of thatyear was elected president of the new regime. Although he was a championof nationalism who viewed the pope-king as a regrettable relic ofthe Middle Ages, his first priority on taking power was to solidify hisrule. And so, in an effort to attract domestic Catholic support, he dispatchedhis army in 1849 to defeat Garibaldi and retake Rome for Pius;three years later, he orchestrated a plebiscite that pronounced himemperor of France. He was no longer Louis Napoleon but NapoleonIII. Meanwhile, the French troops remained in Rome, charged withprotecting the pontiff from revolt or invasion. There, but for brief periods,they remained until the historic summer of 1870, when the declarationof papal infallibility by the First Vatican Council, coincidingwith the outbreak of France"s war with Prussia, led Napoleon to withdrawhis troops. Only then — when the coast was clear — was VictorEmmanuel willing to send in his own army and claim Rome as Italy"snew capital.We are about to enter a world that no longer exists, of a pope whowas a king, of a king ashamed to share his capital with the pope whohad excommunicated him, of nervous nobles, anticlericals bent onseizing the Vatican, would-be assassins, and suspicions of conspiracieseverywhere. Some of its characters were eloquent, some playful, somesober, and some grim; some were witty and urbane, some abusive andinebriated. Some invoked the highest principles of Enlightenment morality,some the sacred principles of revealed truth. Still others seemedmore intent on bellowing epithets as loudly as their voices would allow.The result was the mixture of contradictory traits that is the hallmarkof modern Italy.Many books deal with one aspect or another of this story, althoughmost were written a century or more ago, when none of the Vatican ar-chives for the period were available. Books that try to tell the wholestory addressed in these pages, based on the original documents butwritten for a broad audience, are few indeed. None, so far as I know, arebased on both the historical archives of the Vatican and the records ofthe Italian state. Curiously, in fact, most of the great Italian historiansof national unification — reflecting their secular allegiances — felt uncomfortable even setting foot in the Vatican. To a considerable extent,this odd division of labor continues even today, with the historians ofItalian unification — identified with the proponents of a secular Italy— generally avoiding research that would entail working in the Vaticanarchives, leaving it to Church historians, some of the most illustriousbeing priests themselves. Even among the latter, however, the great majoritywho have written on our topic lacked access to the Vatican"s documentsfrom the period following Leo XIII"s ascendancy to the papacyin 1878, for most wrote before 1979, when these archives were firstopened to researchers. It is, in part, the use of this rich trove of materialthat allows us here to shed new light on the battle waged by the popeand his Curia aimed at depriving the new Italian state of its capital.Today, we all take for granted that the pope is forever on the move,traveling thousands of miles at a time to minister to his far-flung flock.How strange it is to be reminded that, for fifty-nine years after the takingof Rome, no pope would set foot outside the Vatican, no popewould even enter Rome"s own churches nor escape Rome"s summerheat by retreating to the papal villa in the nearby hills at Castel Gandolfo.To travel beyond the minuscule patch of land that remained underhis control would mean acknowledging that the pope was nolonger a prisoner of the Vatican. This, for almost six decades, no popewas willing to do.Chapter 1Destroying the Papal StatesPius IX had not always been such a bitter enemy of progress, ofthings modern. When he ascended to St. Peter"s throne in 1846, amonghis first acts was the introduction of gas streetlights and railways to thePapal States, an implicit rebuke to his predecessor, Gregory XVI, whohad viewed them as dangerous departures from the way God meantthings to be. The new pope also won popular favor in these firstmonths by freeing political prisoners and calling for the reform of thePapal States" notoriously corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.But, caught up in the intoxicating spirit of revolt that swept Europewith shocking speed in 1848, people soon wanted — no, demanded —more, much more. In April of that year, Pius rejected pleas that he supportefforts to drive the Austrians out of the Italian peninsula. In November,amid increasing disorder, calls for a constitution, and demandsfor an end to the papal dictatorship, his prime minister wasstabbed to death in the middle of Rome in broad daylight.Fearing for his life and by then practically a prisoner in his QuirinalPalace in central Rome, the pope decided to escape. Dressed as a simplepriest, his face partially concealed by tinted glasses, he furtivelyboarded the carriage of the Bavarian ambassador and, with his help,made his way south to the seaside fortress of Gaeta, north of Naples inthe Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.The pope"s earthly realm was slipping from his grasp as revolts fromBologna to Rome drove out the cardinal legates and ushered in localgoverning committees that proudly proclaimed the end of papal rule.In Rome, a Constituent Assembly elected by popular vote in January1849 put power in the hands of a triumvirate that would soon includeGiuseppe Mazzini, Italy"s great theorist of nationalism, who was livingin exile in London. Article 1 of the constitution of the new Roman Republicpronounced the pope"s temporal power forever ended. The peoplewere now free to say, think, write, and act as they liked; the Inquisitionwas no more. The Jews were freed from their ghettoes, and evenProtestants could worship freely. From then on, the government was tobe elected by the people.The new utopia did not last long before the French and Austriantroops marched in and restored the pope to power. Any sympathiesthat Pius had previously felt for offering more civil liberties or a measureof democracy were now gone. As he saw it, God had intended thepope to rule over the Papal States and, indeed, only by having suchtemporal power could the pontiff enjoy the freedom that he needed toperform his spiritual duties. The Inquisition was restored, as was theIndex of prohibited books; the Jews were forced back into their ghettoes;all newspapers and books were again heavily censored. Frenchtroops patrolled the streets of Rome, propping up papal rule.The Kingdom of Sardinia quickly emerged as the best hope for thosewho sought change. Despite its name, the kingdom"s capital was Turin,in the northwestern region of Piedmont, and included the neighboringregion of Liguria as well as the kingdom"s namesake, the island of Sardinia.Under the Savoyard dynasty it alone had preserved the reformsintroduced in 1848, which had turned an authoritarian state into a constitutional, parliamentary monarchy. Church control of schools wasended, freedom of religion proclaimed, and the Jesuit order, viewed asthe subversive agent of papal power abroad, banished.By midcentury, most of the educated classes of central and northernItaly had become alienated from the Church — or at least from its centerof power in Rome — and were hostile to the continued presence offoreign troops in the peninsula. Resentment in Lombardy and Venetoto the Austrians" rule kept tensions high, as did their troops, who patrolledmuch of the Papal States, and the French soldiers who guardedRome.The king of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, whose penchant formilitary adventure — and incompetence — was notorious, began toglimpse his chance for greatness. What could be more glorious thanputting himself at the head of an army that would conquer much of Italyand, in so doing, not only dramatically enlarge his realm but casthim as a great Italian patriot? Yet his advisers, Prime Minister CountCamillo Cavour chief among them, urged caution. To take on both theFrench and the Austrians would, he knew, be suicidal.The king"s big chance came in July 1858, when Napoleon III met secretlywith Cavour in France and hatched a plan to drive the Austrians— their common enemy — from the Italian peninsula. The plan alsoinvolved removing three-quarters of the Papal States from the pope"scontrol, leaving only Rome and the region around it for the pontiff,under French protection, a measure designed in part to placate FrenchCatholic opinion. There was no discussion at the time of attacking theKingdom of Naples in the South nor of unifying all of Italy under asingle government. In fact, Napoleon III seems to have envisionedsome kind of loose confederation of weak states taking shape in Italy,possibly under the titular presidency of the pope himself. This wouldhave the virtue of weakening his chief rival, Austria, and creatingan ally to his south in the Kingdom of Sardinia while ensuring thatthe fractionated Italian peninsula would never produce a state strongenough to compete with the French for European influence.War broke out near the Piedmontese border with Lombardy in May1859 and quickly spread to the Papal States as Italian nationalists fueledrevolts that again sent the cardinal legates packing. Plebiscites demandinguni.cation with the Kingdom of Sardinia quickly followed. Meanwhile,responding to a plea from the Sicilian proponents of unification,Garibaldi assembled a force of a thousand volunteers — wearing open collared red shirts in place of regular uniforms — and set sail. Landingnear Palermo in May 1860, these poorly trained irregulars dispatchedthe Bourbon army with embarrassing ease, so, after conquering Sicily,they headed north, up the Italian boot, on their way to Rome.Alarmed yet excited, Victor Emmanuel II could no longer merelystand by. To do nothing while Garibaldi"s red shirts, in the name ofunifying Italy, marched into the Holy City would court disaster. ShouldGaribaldi succeed in taking Rome, he would put Victor Emmanuel toshame. In place of a large northern Italian state under the Savoyardmonarchy, the frightening specter of all Italy unified under a revolutionaryrepublic became all too real. And so the king sent his armysouth, intercepting Garibaldi north of Naples before he could attackRome. There, a curious military ceremony took place, with Garibaldihanding over control of the newly fallen Kingdom of Naples to theSavoyard king. Rome — at least for the moment — remained in papalhands.A year later, the new Kingdom of Italy was officially inaugurated.Technically, it was simply the continuation of the old Kingdom of Sardinia,so no new constitution was thought necessary. Although the Italianstate was much larger than the king or his ministers had imaginedthree years earlier, when they had hatched their plot with the Frenchemperor, two big holes remained. Rome and the region around it werestill in the pope"s hands and, in the Northeast, Veneto and its capital,Venice, were still under Austrian control.Faced with the demise of most of his earthly domain, Pius IX struckback as best he could. Rebuffing Victor Emmanuel"s attempts to negotiate,the pope, in an encyclical in January 1860, demanded the "pureand simple restitution" of the Papal States, excommunicated all thoseguilty of usurping the papal lands, and voiced his belief that Godwould not long allow the outrage to stand. The days of a unified Italianstate, he was sure, were numbered.1Yet the unification of Italy under the Savoyard king left many of Italy"smost ardent nationalists unhappy. Mazzini, a principled opponentof monarchy and a committed republican, had been willing to hold hisnose during the battle against the Austrians because he believed thatthe first priority should be driving the foreigners out of the peninsula.But the situation had changed. His already dim view of the monarchygot even dimmer when it became clear that the new government hadno immediate plan to take Rome. For the nationalists, an Italian statewithout Rome as its capital was inconceivable.In 1862 Garibaldi, the peripatetic Hero of Two Worlds — so calledbecause of his exploits in South America — again tried to force theking"s hand by summoning his motley army of red shirts for a marchon Rome. Gathering his forces in Sicily, the scene of his triumphs twoyears earlier, he prepared for the march north into the Holy City, leavingthe Savoyard king and his ministers in a painful quandary. Theycould hardly allow a private army to march across the country, norwere they prepared to turn against the French, whose troops wereguarding the pope. Yet, realizing that Garibaldi was far more popularthan anyone in the government — more popular than the king himself— they feared sending the army against him.After much hand-wringing, the Italian leaders decided that they hadno choice. Garibaldi had to be stopped. A contingent of Italian troopscaught up with the red shirts at the edge of a mountain forest in southernCalabria, at Aspromonte. Thinking that the approaching Italiancolonel had come to talk, Garibaldi told his men not to shoot. But theItalian troops opened .re. In the resulting carnage, a bullet shatteredGaribaldi"s foot, a wound that plagued him for the rest of his life. Someof his red shirts were killed, others injured, and not a few were seizedand then summarily executed, charged with having deserted the regulararmy.Aspromonte sent shock waves through the peninsula. Italy"s greatesthero had been shot and crippled by the Italian army, acting on theking"s orders, and all because he had had the courage to risk his life inan effort to claim Rome for Italy.Meanwhile, in the Holy City, the pope tried hard to buck up his supporters"sagging spirits. In February 1864, Odo Russell, Britain"s perceptive— if sometimes acerbic — envoy to Rome, reported that Pius waseager for the upcoming Carnival celebrations to be as successful asever. The partisans of Italianunification responded by calling for aboycott. The Italianissimi, Russell wrote, "won"t attend the Carnivaland won"t dance, whilst the Papalini or neri ["blacks"; the Roman aristocratsdevoted to the pope were called the black nobility] dance franticallyto show their devotion to the Pope because His Holiness toldsome old princesses that he wished the faithful to be gay and happy. Inconsequence we saw this winter at the balls given by the pious Papalinithe oldest dowagers attempting to be frolicsome, and old PrincessBorghese, who has scarcely been able to walk for the last half century,hobbled through a quadrille with Field Marshal Duke Saldanha whohad not danced since the Congress of Vienna, and all this in the nameof religion!"2Desperate to get the French troops out of Rome — their presence inthe middle of the peninsula an affront to Italian nationalist sentiment— the Italian government came up with a proposal that it hoped wouldtake care of the problem, at least in the short run. The resulting agreement,signed on September 15, 1864, and subsequently dubbed theConvention of September, called for all the French troops to leaveRome within two years. In exchange, the Italian government made twomajor concessions. It agreed to transfer its capital from Turin to Flor-ence — a move that in fact did take place the following year — thus apparently renouncing the nationalist dream of making Rome Italy"s capital.3 And it promised not only not to attack papal territory, but toprevent anyone else from threatening it. Napoleon III insisted on thispledge, for he had to convince the conservative French Catholics that,in withdrawing the French troops, he was not abandoning the pope.The Italian government and the king clearly made the agreement inbad faith. If they could get the French troops out of Rome, theythought, they would eventually .nd some pretext to annex it.4In all matters involving relations with other states, the pope reliedheavily on his secretary of state, the powerful and controversial GiacomoAntonelli. Something of a lady"s man despite being rather ugly,Antonelli was as arrogant and severe with his underlings as he was solicitousand charming with foreign diplomats and aristocratic visitors.One of Pius"s biographers, Adolph Mundt, described him in typicallyun.attering terms: "Antonelli is a tall, thin man who wears on his dark,yellowish face, a savage expression but one that is, at the same time, demonically astute. His long head resting on his shoulders brings to mindthat of a bird of prey." Antonelli"s biographer, the American FrankCoppa, while painting a much more positive picture, stresses his lackof friends, his relentless self-control, and his insistence on formality,having even his parents and brothers address him as "Monsignor" andpreferring them to refer to him as "His Eminence."5Returning from a trip to London just after the Convention of Septemberwas signed, Odo Russell was surprised to find that Antonelliand others of the Curia remained optimistic about the future. The cardinals,wrote the British envoy, "laugh in anybody"s face who mentionsthe departure of the French troops from Rome." When Russell remindedthe prelates that they had, a few years earlier, been similarlyconvinced that the Austrians would never leave Lombardy, nor thatVictor Emmanuel would ever dare seize any of the Papal States, theystood their ground. Napoleon III, they insisted, could never leave thepope "in a helpless condition to the Piedmontese and the tender merciesof his subjects, the Catholics of France and of the whole world willnot stand it."6Antonelli, it turned out, had some reason for his optimism, as Russelldiscovered a week later when he again met the secretary of state. Aswas often his custom, Antonelli took the British envoy by his arm for awalk as they chatted. The French emperor, Antonelli told him, had recentlyconveyed a message through the papal nuncio in Paris."Tell the Pope,"Napoleon had said, "to be calm, to trust in me and tojudge me by my deeds and not by my words."From this conversation and from other sources in Paris, Antonelliassured Russell, "it has become evident that the Convention of 15 Septemberhas several meanings, one put upon it at Turin and the other atParis publicly and officially, whilst a third interpretation, and the onlycorrect one, exists in the Emperor Napoleon"s mind. Much as I havethought about it, I know not what His Majesty"s ultimate plans maybe. . . . But one thing becomes clearer than it ever was before to mymind, namely that he does not intend Italy to unite."Russell remained skeptical. Was it really the French emperor"s intentionto see the new Italian state dismantled?Antonelli tried to explain: "First of all the Convention contains in itselfthe destruction of the unity of Italy, for it reserves the TemporalPower to the Pope and deprives Italy of Rome, and Italy can never be aunited nation without Rome. Secondly, the Convention declares Florenceto be the future capital of Italy, that is, it forms the great politicalcenter of Italy in the north. Now the North did not require any othercapital than Turin while it waited for Rome. The danger to unity is inthe south."7 Had Naples been declared the capital, Antonelli explained,the South might have been placated. But by making Florence the newcapital, he argued, "the Convention leaves the South free to fall off, separateand constitute a southern Kingdom." Clearly, said Antonelli, "Napoleonimposed Florence on the Italians as their capital so that Naplesmight be free to act for herself and Italy become a Confederation dividedinto three, namely a northern and southern Kingdom and theHoly See in the center." To make the plan palatable to Victor Emmanuel,Antonelli added, Napoleon was willing to allow a Savoyard prince,perhaps even one of the king"s own sons, to become king of Naples.Antonelli then surveyed the hazards ahead. Napoleon"s true intentions,he admitted, could not fully be known. But whatever Napoleonhad in mind, the pope would pursue the same path, for he could followno other.He would denounce those who sought to take the papal landsfrom him, and he would insist on the return of the Papal States."In the coming struggle, we may be beaten and submerged," saidAntonelli. "I am the .rst to admit that it is possible, nay, I will say evenprobable, but we will do our duty towards the Holy Church like honestmen knowing that when God in his mercy allows these trials to passHis Church will rise again as she has ever done before and her enemieswill be dispersed and confounded."On his way home, Russell ran into Prince Altomonte, a former ministerin the court of the deposed king of Naples. Asking the prince whathe thought of the new Italian treaty with France, Russell was surprisedto hear him parrot Antonelli"s view. Napoleon did not want Italy tounite, he said, and the Convention, by securing the pope"s temporalrule over Rome and imposing Florence, the capital of northern Italy,on the Italians, had left Naples free to secede as long as its Bourbonthrone was occupied by a prince of the House of Savoy."8Such optimism sprang from another source as well, for tensions inEurope were high, pitting Prussia against Austria and both againstFrance. The one thing that all of these antagonists shared was an oppositionto the rise of a strong, united Italy that could compete with themfor influence. War seemed imminent, and for those in the Vatican therewas reason to believe — or, at least, to hope — that the belligerentswould see to it that the Italian kingdom was soon cut down to size.In mid-January 1865, Antonelli discussed just such a prospect in aconversation with the British envoy. "Like the Pope," Russell reportedin his dispatch to London, "Antonelli hopes in a European war to setmatters right again in the Holy See!"9Yet, by the time of Russell"s New Year"s audience with the pope thefollowing year, he found the pontiff — known for his rapid moodchanges — despondent and frustrated."How is it," Pius asked him, "that the British can hang two thousandNegroes to put down an uprising in Jamaica, and receive only universalpraise for it, while I cannot hang a single man in the Papal States withoutprovoking worldwide condemnation?""His Holiness," Russell recounted, "here burst out laughing and repeatedhis last sentence several times holding up one finger as he alludedto hanging one man, so as to render the idea still more impressive."This and other aspects of their encounter left the British envoy uneasy.While the seventy-three-year-old pope appeared to be in excellenthealth, his conversation, Russell reported, "bore the unmistakable signsof the approach of second childhood." The pontiff "s ministers fearedhis growing irritability and were loath to say anything that might upsethim. And so, Russell concluded, "notwithstanding the proverbial goodnessand benevolence of Pius IX, he seems to inspire them with unreasonableapprehension and inexplicable terror."10A few months later the pope was in a better mood, having new reasonto believe that a European war would soon lead to the restorationof the Papal States. Fighting had begun in June 1866, pitting Austrianforces against Prussia and Italy. The Italians had joined Prussia in anattempt to seize the disputed lands held by Austria on the northeast ofthe Italian peninsula. But the war was not going well for them, and onJune 24 the Austrians pulverized the Italian army at Custoza, near Verona."The war absorbs every other interest," Russell reported from Rome,"and the success of the Austrians at Custoza fills the Papal party withunbounded joy."11But the cardinals" delight was short-lived, for farther north the Prussianssoon overwhelmed Austria"s army. And, embarrassingly forthe Italian king, while Italy"s regular army and navy were both beingrouted by the Austrians, Garibaldi, again leading his own army of irregulars,was scoring a series of impressive victories against them.On July 10 Russell chronicled the change of mood: Austria"s losses,he wrote, have "destroyed the hopes entertained, but a few days ago, bythe Papal Government and the Legitimists in Rome. They had prayedfor and hailed the war as their only salvation and had never doubtedthat Austrian troops would again occupy the lost provinces of the Popeand would re-establish Francis II on the throne of Naples.""I called again on Cardinal Antonelli this morning," Russell reported,"and found His Eminence looking painfully ill and unusuallyexcited. "Good God," he exclaimed and struck his forehead with thepalms of his hands, "what is to become of us?" "12With the Convention"s deadline for the departure of the Frenchtroops from Rome rapidly approaching, some of Pius"s advisers wereurging that he escape from Rome while he could and take refuge inAustria or Spain.This was the situation in December 1866 as the French flag was takendown from Rome"s Sant"Angelo Castle and the last French soldiersboarded their ships in the papal port of Civitavecchia, bound forhome.13With Rome no longer protected by foreign troops, Victor Emmanueland his ministers found themselves in an awkward position. The nationalistmovement had long insisted that Italian unification would becomplete only when Rome was made capital of Italy, and the lack ofpopular support for papal rule inside the city was well known. Yet, insigning the Convention of September, the Italian government hadmade itself the guarantor of papal rule in Rome, the king"s honor atstake.The trick, from the king"s as well as his ministers" point of view, wasto find a way to provoke a "spontaneous" revolt in Rome, which theycould use as a pretext for sending in troops to restore order. To thisend, they were secretly financing a number of subversive groups in theHoly City. Yet this tactic was proving to be not only frustrating but alsodangerous. It was frustrating because the Romans, disgruntled thoughthey may have been, seemed none too eager to put their lives at risk byrevolting against papal rule. The pope, after all, still had thousands ofhis own military recruits — almost all foreigners — as well as a disreputable,and greatly feared, force of irregulars that patrolled the streets.But the government"s plotting was also dangerous, for plans could easilygo wrong. After all, the most likely candidates for the secret subsidieswere revolutionaries who would be pleased to see the Italian monarchyfall along with the papacy.In the government"s campaign of deceit and plotting, Garibaldicame to play a central role. In some ways this was odd, for Garibaldidespised dissimulation. Undeterred by the disastrous fate of his marchon Rome in 1862, he again deemed the time right for forcing the government"shand by leading his army on Rome. While careful to keep asafe public distance, the king secretly encouraged him, for such an expeditionwas exactly the excuse that he needed to justify sending in hisown troops.Leaving his island retreat of Caprera, off the Sardinian coast, early in1867, wearing his trademark red shirt and embroidered cap, the sixty-year-old Garibaldi set off on a European tour to drum up support forhis crusade. He put one of his sons in charge of collecting funds fromwealthy donors while urging patriotic women to sew red shirts for hismen.In early September, speaking at an international conference in Geneva,Garibaldi called on the Italian state, on taking Rome, to declarethe papacy "the most noxious of all sects," to end it, and to replace theCatholic priesthood — an engine of ignorance in his view — "with thepriesthood of science and intelligence."14Believing, with good reason, that he had the Italian government"stacit approval for his assault, Garibaldi returned to Italy and readiedhis forces. But early on the morning of September 24, as he was aboutto cross into papal territory, Italian troops seized him and escorted himback to Caprera, where he was effectively placed under house arrest. Italy"sleaders wanted to use Garibaldi"s capture to show other governmentstheir good faith in upholding the treaty with France while hopingthat Garibaldi"s bold call for an uprising would prompt a revolt inRome. They could then argue that, despite their best efforts, the popewas not safe in Rome and so justify sending their troops into the HolyCity.Yet Rome remained embarrassingly quiet. Its people did not revolt.True to form, Garibaldi soon made a dramatic escape from Caprera,leaving a friend on his terrace dressed in his clothes and walking withcrutches to imitate him while he ran the naval blockade of his island ina small boat, his gray beard stained black to help avoid detection. Hemade his way to Florence, where, given his immense popularity — onlyincreased by his latest exploits — the government dared not arrest himagain. Garibaldi prepared his army for the final attack on Rome.But, in Paris, Napoleon could take no more. Angered by the Italians"double-dealing, he ordered French troops back into the Italian peninsulaand, on November 3, 1867, they caught up with Garibaldi"s irregularsat Mentana, a few miles north of Rome. There the red shirts wererouted, 1,600 of them taken prisoner. Although Garibaldi escaped, hewas once again arrested by Italian police. Still afraid to put him on trial,the government sent him back to Caprera, where he was kept as a virtualprisoner for the next three years.15The situation was now anything but stable. French troops were againpatrolling Rome"s streets. They had been gone less than a year.In early 1868, Odo Russell described the new mood in Rome. Thepresence of the French forces, he wrote, "tends to make of Rome afortified city and of the Pope a military despot." According to the Britishenvoy, "the clerical party who rejoice with great joy in their presentturn of fortune and believe in their future triumph, pray devoutlythat general European war may soon divide and break up Italy." Thepope, Russell reported, had himself become almost giddy at the turn ofevents.On March 26 the British envoy had an audience with the pope. Withthe return of the French troops, along with his own expanded papalarmy, Pius told him, he now had, in proportion to his population, thelargest army in the world. He chuckled at the thought: "If the interestsof the Church ever required it," Russell recalled the elderly pontiff tellinghim, "he would even buckle on a sword, mount a horse, and takecommand of his army himself like Julius II."16From the pope"s perspective, the situation was now looking better,much better. But Pius was by nature an optimist, a disposition thatwould be sorely challenged by the events to follow.Copyright © 2004 by David I. Kertzer. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

We think of Italy as an ancient nation, but in fact the unified Italian state was born only in the nineteenth century - and only against the adamant refusal of the pope to relinquish his rule of Rome. In this riveting chronicle of international intrigue, the renowned historian David Kertzer delves into secret Vatican archives to reveal a venomous conflict that kept the pope a self-imposed prisoner of the Vatican for more than fifty years. King Victor Emmanuel, his nemesis Garibaldi, the French emperor Napoleon III, England, Spain, Germany, Austria, and even America play a part in this astonishing drama. On September 20, 1870, the king's battle to unite the disparate Italian states came to a head when his troops broke through the walls of Rome, which the pope had ruled for centuries. Pope Pius IX, ensconced with the Vatican Council, denounced the usurpers and plotted with his advisers to regain power or else flee Italy altogether. A dramatic struggle unfolded over the next two decades, pitting church against state and the nations of Europe against one another. This is a story of outrageous accusations, mutual denunciations, raucous demonstrations, frenetic diplomacy, and secret dealings. Rocks were hurled along with epithets, and war across Europe seemed inevitable.

The antagonists were as explosive as the events. Pius IX, the most important pontiff in modern history, engineered the doctrine of papal infallibility but ended his days reviled and denounced. The blustering Victor Emmanuel schemed behind the backs of his own ministers. Garibaldi, Italy's dashing national hero, committed naive and dangerous mistakes. Beyond Italy, the pope's main protector, Napoleon III, was himself being taken prisoner. This devastating conflict, almost entirely unknown until now, still leaves a deep mark on the Italian soul. No one who reads David Kertzer's revelatory account will ever think of Italy or the Vatican in quite the same way.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

"Modern Italy was founded... over the dead body of Pope Pius IX," writes Kertzer, author of the National Jewish Book Award-winning The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (also a National Book Award finalist), in this riveting and fast-paced chronicle of the rise of the Italian state and the Vatican's forgotten battle against the nationalists to retain power over Rome. In 1870, Victor Emmanuel II, king of a newly united Italy, sought an agreement with Pius IX in which the pope would rule the Tiber's right bank while the king would govern the left bank. When the pope rejected this arrangement, Italian troops seized power in Rome and Pius IX sought refuge in the Vatican palaces, declaring himself a prisoner. Led by Garibaldi and aided by Catholic France, the nationalists gained control in 1878, and so angered were nationalists at Pius IX that in 1881 protesters almost succeeded in dumping his corpse into the Tiber. The animosity between the pope and the state continued until 1929, when Mussolini and the Vatican signed a concordat in which the Vatican recognized the legitimacy of the Italian state and the Vatican was granted the rights of a sovereign state. Kertzer, given access to newly opened Vatican archives, tells a first-rate tale of the political intrigues and corrupt characters of a newly emerging nation, offers history writing at its best, and provides insight into a little-known chapter in religious and political history. 16 pages of b&w photos, 5 maps. Agent, Ted Chichak. (Nov. 15) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

How the Vatican challenged the newborn Italian state; from a National Book Award finalist. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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