The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851Various
History
The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
The incidents described in most detail are those immediately preceding
and following the fatal surrender of Milan; and it is impossible not to
be struck by the contrast of the royal and the republican party,
assuming the statement to be in all respects correct. But passing this
ignominious period, there ought to be small difference of opinion in a
free and educated country as to where the right lay in the subsequent
Roman struggle. What sensible or honest Protestant would not sympathize
with the indignant eloquence of this earnest Italian protesting against
the flimsy oratory of a Jesuit Frenchman?
MAZZINI TO MONTALEMBERT.
"You base your argument upon the void; you discuss that which was, not
that which is. The Papacy is dead, choked in blood and mire; dead,
because it has betrayed its own mission of protection to the weak
against the oppressor; dead, because for three centuries and a half it
has prostituted itself with princes; dead, because in the name of
egotism and before the palaces of all the corrupt, hypocritical, and
skeptical governments, it has for the second time crucified Christ;
dead, because it has uttered words of faith which it did not itself
believe; dead, because it has denied human liberty and the dignity of
our immortal souls; dead, because it has condemned science in Galileo,
philosophy in Giordano Bruno, religious aspiration in John Huss and
Jerome of Prague, political life by an anathema against the rights of
the people, civil life by Jesuitism, the terrors of the inquisition, and
the example of corruption, the life of the family by confession
converted into a system of espionage, and by division introduced between
father and son, brother and brother, husband and wife; dead, for the
princes, by the treaty of Westphalia; dead, for the peoples, with
Gregory XI., in 1378, and with the commencement of the schism; dead, for
Italy, since 1530, when Clement VII. and Charles V., the Pope and the
Emperor, signed an infamous compact, and extinguished, at Florence, the
dying liberties of Italy, as to-day you have attempted to extinguish her
rising liberties in Rome; dead, because the people has risen, because
Pius IX. has fled, because the multitude curses him, because those very
men who for fifteen years have made war upon the priests, in the name of
Voltaire, now hypocritically defend them, because you and yours defend
them, with intolerance and by force of arms, and declare that the Papacy
and liberty cannot live side by side? You ask Victor Hugo to point out
to you an idea which has been worshipped for eighteen centuries. It is
that idea which you have declared irreconcilable with the Papacy, and
which was breathed into humanity by God; the idea which has withdrawn
from Catholicism the half of the Christian world, the idea which has
snatched from you Lammennais and the flower of the intellects of Europe,
the idea of Christ, that pure, holy, and sacred liberty which you
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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