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Show ri Bp T.'fflarion Oaipford PPf fl JCfll Bp Jrcbbisbop Corrigatt POPE LEO THE MAN. It would serve no good purpose 10 I enumerate the prelates, jurisconsults, i pnldiers, financiers and honest country -ml omen of whom the Perci family i have complete records. The Catholic church is democratic, and neither demands de-mands eiuarterings of nobility nor rejects re-jects them: Sixtus V was a born swineherd. swine-herd. Martin V was of the princely Co- lnna. Ccleslhie V was a hermit, Boni-face Boni-face VIII was of the great Caetar.i ; 1 family, and the Kmperor Maximilian 1 ; It: said to have desired to be Pope, i It is the tendency of the mo lei n woilj i ' to rej.-ci the claims of blood. It is not '. ' the tendency of modern science to do j ? -, however, and those who study the development and degeneration of man will not underrate the manife.-L rjoiali- ;1 ties of a family that lias traversed I ! six centuries of Italian history with : 1 considerable distinction and without ' taint or crime, disease or insanity. ; , faints have been the children of sin- ij nets; madmen's-fathers have been men I of genius, and senilis itself has often hprung out of mediocrity, but enduring j 5 jttri-ngth has never issued from an in- i licriumce of weakness, nor a wide and ! I well balanced intelligence from the oa- ; , pricious sifts that sometimes, lend ,; brilliancy to a degenerate stock. i . A for the Pope himself, being- des-t des-t tin-d for a place in the world which .' v, as 10 bring him into opposition to the ! i' mi'oral rulers of his country, it was J fortunate for him that he should have ' been the son of a small landed proprie tor, a member of that class which, of all others, has suffered most by the unification and aggrandizement of Italy, and which, from an intimate connection con-nection with agriculture throughout many generations, possesses a traditional tradi-tional knowledge of the country's real conditions such as the average town gentleman might strive in vain to acquire. ac-quire. If Leo XIII has felt and phown a profound interest in the stale of work-jngmen work-jngmen and has labored to the best of his ability to help them, it is largely i because he was born among the people who tilled his father's ground tor a liv- ing; that is to say, among the only v-orkingmen without whom mankind would starve the laborers of the soil. This intimate connection, involving un- ' broken intercourse with farmers and consequent acquaintance with the i changes in the agric ultural state of j Italy, war. not interrupted by Cardinal Poori's elevation to the Pontificate. I Throughout his life, on the contrary, :! he has kept possession of a certain farm at Maonza. which was his por- 1 lion of the paternal property, and long after he was prevented from visiting the place his interest in it? remained unabated, un-abated, and he himself examined the accounts lie received from his tenant. Tli ere is, perhaps, no hereditary in- i stin t in man after the great passions ! p strong as that 'we cal! attachment j to the soil." It isi the o-p ..;! source of patriotism: it is the basis of the idea of home and intimately connected with i the human institution of the family, which itself must always be the foun- j il dation of civilized society and not- I withstanding the theories of modern progress, it is ihe prime requisite for j permanent life in a state. I If we knew as much about the child- ' hood of ether distinguished men in our j own times we should come to the con- ; 1 elusion that very few were so rigidly 1 iind hardly brought up. physically and j I mentally, ;is Joachim Pecoi. nor under ! J the immediate influence of sterner ex- j j amides, nor in more careful pra"'fce' I of a daily and hourly frugality. "h? j 1 Peeoi were gentlefolks, but far from j 1 rich: they were num. rous and their j I numbers were increasing: they had the j IS legitimate prid".of people who had oe- j cupied a good position in life for con- ; tunes, and they possessed small means of increasing their fortune and none of i the opportunities necessary for engag- ' ing in commerce. At that time hun- j dn-.ds of families in Italy were in the j same'eireumstanees, and many are pre- j cifvly so situated today. j At the end of the eighteenth century i . and during the early years of the nine- ! teenth. Home presented brilliant scenes j to the foreign visitor and was the home j of a highly cultivated society, in whic h wit and talent ranked higher than they do now in most European c ities. But ' Roman wit is keen and cruel rather than gay, and the city itself has at all times preserved a sort of ecclesiastical gravity which it is hard to describe, but impossible not to feel; so that, although it used to assume an air of careless enjoyment en-joyment for a. few days in carnival time or on special occasions, such moods were always of very short duration and were followed by a sort of general de-piessnm de-piessnm really much more natural to the people. There was much physical discomfort during the winter month!: both for those who lived in gloomy and unadorned palaces and for those whose humbler dwellings looked upon dark and narrow streets. oftn reeking with a penrtratii-g dampness. Amid costly surroundings the richest families lived in a way which no one in the most moderate mod-erate circumstances could endure nowadays. now-adays. The Roman world did not at that ' time suffer only from the discomfort of I its own harsh traditions, it was still outwardly oppres-rod and inwardly toi -I monted by changes and the fear of great changes in the state of Europe I which might be fatal to itself, and by ! the uncertainty that always veiled Na-I Na-I poleon's future action The city had been convulsed and then maltreated into submission by the French occupation occupa-tion in 17ys; its confidence in its own I future was not finally re-established by Napoleon's fall, when Joachim Fecci was ." year.1 old, nor did Rome ever return re-turn again to a condition like that in which the French revolution had found it. In thia state of society Count Ludo. . vico Pecci. the father of the Pope, spent the most important part of his life, being a grown man when it began and etill far from an old man when Napoleon disappeared. He was without a profession, for though he had the rank of colonel, he had no regiment, and his military functions seem to "have been limited to the command of a j problematic company of mountain mil- , j itia that never saw active service and probably never mustered to a drill. j Occasionally, however, he went to Rome to give an account of his more I or less imaginary troops, and it was by j these brief visits that his interest in; current events was kept alive and his j ' political opinions formed or modified, j J The rest of his time was spent in the j . retirement of Carpineto, a primitive j town, where books were the only lux- ; uries and where life presented with j j an even greater harshness those diffi- j ! culties and discomforts that made it I disagreeable in the city. The prin- ! cipal events of over twenty years were ! the birthn of his seven- children, of ! whom six lived to old age. The narrow exiaience to which cir- ; cumstances confined him was widened i by the companionship of a remarkable woman, his wife, whose maiden name ! j was Anna Prosper! Buzzi. She came j of the small country nobility, for her family owned property and lived at j Cori, within driving distance of Carpi- ! I neto. The loving esteem which Anna Pecci'? husband and children felt for ; her almost amounted to veneration. ! j They called her the pillar of their house, and compared her to the wise j woman describee! by Solomon: her hus- j band respected her and reiied upon j hr-r, her children loved and obeyed her, ; the poor trusted her in heir trouble, j and every one who had known her : returned her loss with sincere grief. I More can hardly be said or thought of ; a mother alive or dead. ' j o.ichim Vincent Pecci was the j si., th c hiid of Count Ludovico Pecci and 1 was born at Carpineto on March 2. 1S10. j He seems to have teen a boy of reticent I appearance, but of a wiry and endur- j ing constitution and great nervous en- ergy. Like all very strong men, he af- terwards overtaxed his strength to a i degree that would have killed mt ! people, and exposed his health somewhat some-what recklessly. Yet in a life that has already extended for beyond the ordinary ordi-nary limits of longevity he has rarely-been rarely-been ill. and only once with a malarious fever, and he still preserves traces of altogether exceptional bodily vigor. He probably owe.? this in rjart to the really magnificently sound stock from which he comes, and partly, also, to t love of an open-air life which he acquired as a child in the Voisican hills. Lean and active as a boy, he loved walking and climbing, and preferred a day's shooting in the mountains to any other sort of a holiday, for he was a good shot, and his gun is still preserved at Carpineto: moreover, in a country and at a time which. made riding a. necessity neces-sity of life, he was a good rider. When he was only seven and a half years old, Joachim and his brother Joseph Jo-seph were taken to Rome inorderto be further prepared for school, and yet at that age the boy had already learned his Latin grammar, as is proved by the affectionate messages he used to send to his teacher. The only possible conclusion con-clusion is that Joachim's intelligence was precocious. We find that he was sent to the Jesuit Jes-uit school at Viterbo when eight and a half years old. with his brother Jo-! Jo-! seph. after they had both spent a year j in Rome at the Palazzo Muti. near the i Capitol, with an uncle who was a law-j law-j yer in practice. It is not unlikely that I the sudden change from the very lim- ited country existence at Carpineto to the great old city produced upon the precocious child one of those first ! strong impressions that last through life and sometimes determine a career. i Both he and his brother won many 1 prizes and were constantly praised for : their good behavior, and, so far as any , evidence goes, there was nothing in I it I tie Joachim's bearing to foreshadow the i man of iron will and almost relentless i disposition, who was to crush out brig-; brig-; andage in Benevento at 28 and bring ; Prince Bismarck "to Canossa" at 70. 1 He left Viterbo at the time of his mother's death, and never returned. She died in Rome of a malarious fever and ! was buried in the Church of the Stim-I Stim-I mate. The loss of his mother seems to l:ae produced upon Joachim a deep im-; im-; pression, and perhaps the melancholy 1 state of mind in which he long re-; re-; mained had something to do with his final determination to enter the church. I From the Jesuit school of Viterbo he went to the great Jesuit institution of 1 the Collegio Romano, where he, the born classical scholar, took the first I prize in physics and chemistry, and was j the second in mathematics of physics ! in 182S, when he was 18 a fact which : has more weight when it is remembered ; that instead of being the clever boy in a little school of forty scholars, he was now one of 1,400 students. Before he had taken his theological degree and before he was 22 years old. he was appointed an instructor in logic and metaphysics in the German seminary. semi-nary. He left Collegio Romano as doctor doc-tor of theology in 1S32 to pursue his studies in canonical and civil law at the University of Rome. Thence he graduated in 1835, after obtaining many distinctions, the last and most important impor-tant of which was that of doctor of theology "ad honorem," a special degree de-gree bearing the great seals of the uni-verF.ity uni-verF.ity and very rarely conferred upon any .one. The little money that was at his disposal dis-posal Joachim spent on boc'.cs, but it is recorded of him that he occasionally indulged in a cup of coffee in the Piazza di Spagna. He was an ascetic, both by temperament and education, and has remained so-throughout his life. He; was an indefatigable student, of keen, critical sense and vast memory, and he was always a master of language. Joachim Pecci -celebrated his first Mass on New Year's day, 1S3S, in the little chapel of St. Stanislaus in the Church of St. Andrew, on the Quirinal, A part of the letter he wrote to Cardinal Cardi-nal Sala on the day after he said his first Mass throws some light on his state of mind: "I should like the condition con-dition of prelate to be second in everything every-thing to that of the priest, which is by far the nobler. It is, cf course, true i that a man may serve the church in a ! civil office, in a governorship and tlv like, 'but his faculties are necessarily! dissipated in all secular affairs, for these contribute not a little to distract heart and mind from the sublime ob- I ject of the priesthood, which consists I only in serving the church for the greater glory of God." The letter was written on Jan. 2, and on Feb. 13, when he had been a priest only six weeks, he received notice that he was appointed delegate that is to say, civil governor of the duchy of Benevento. He determined that Benevento should no longer be a refuge for criminals driven out of Naples, and as soon as he was recovered from a malarious fever caught in reaching his post he used his powers to the utmost. With the learning learn-ing of a theologian and the vocation of a true priest, he possessed many gifts of the soldier and still more of the administrator. ad-ministrator. The versatility which had wen for the theological student prizes in chemistry and mathematics stood the churchman in good stead when he was ordered to turn brigand hunter. But the beginning was typical of the ! end, and when Mgr. Pecci collected his - energies to grapple with the vetty anarchy an-archy of the little southern duchy he ' was doing on a small scale what he was to attempt forty years later in gigantic gigan-tic proportions, when he began to face ' and fight the anarchy of Europe and the disorder of the world; and as in ; Benevento he took the side of the peo- ! pie, the real sufferers, against the nobles, no-bles, who protected the robbers for their own ends, so in alter years he took the part of the workingman, who. is the people, against the powers that curtail his rights and rob him of his ; bread. i Mgr. Pecci's government had given j the highest satisfaction in Rome when i the duchy had been almost given up j for lost. He remained only one year as governor gover-nor in the city where so large a portion of his life was afterward to be passed, but the reforms and improvements he effected in that short time were very important. He reorganized the courts of justice and brought themi all together into one building. He visited every part of the country under' his jurisdiction jurisdic-tion and improved the administration of many disorderly municipalities. He foundod, subscribed for and opened a savings bank' at a time when savings banks were almot.t unknown in Italy. It is recorded that before the first year of his able and Just governorship was ended there werei several days on which the prisons were empty. At that time, as if to afford him a further opportunity of advancement, the office of Papal Nuncio in. Brussels was about to become vacant under circumstances cir-cumstances of rather peculiar difficulty difficul-ty for the Holy See, and Pope Gregory seems gladly to have accepted the suggestion sug-gestion of one of his ministers that it should ' be filled by Mgr. Pecci, who w-as already looked upon as the most gifted and brilliant of the younger prelates. pre-lates. In January, 1843, when not quite 30 years old, he received notice of an appointment which implied consecration consecra-tion as a bishop "in partibus infi-delium," infi-delium," but by no means made it sure that he should ever exercise episcopal functions. Mgr. Pecci's period of service as Nuncio Nun-cio in Belgium may be regarded as the end of hia apprenticeship, which embraced em-braced as varied an experience of men and things as could possibly be crowded into so short a space of time. He had begun as an eminent scholar, he had been a successful teiacher of young students, stu-dents, he had been suddenly sent to fight brigands and to que'l anarchy and revolution by the systematic- improvement improve-ment of ens of the Tnon. 'civilized portions por-tions of Italy; finally, he' was-selected for a difficult diplomatic post, in a foreign for-eign capital, to succeed Mgr .Forniri, one of the most gifted of ecclesiastical diplomatists. Even at that time he was convinced that so far as the church can be said ' to have a policy it must be one of centralization, cen-tralization, and never, under any circumstances, cir-cumstances, one of federation; that it is absolutely essential that all authority author-ity should emanate from one head and be enforced at an .. .equal .' pressure throughout every part of the organization, organiza-tion, arid that the power to regulate matters in which a certain latitude of action isi admissible should be in one hand only. In his opinion the church was. militant, and therefore an army, and it was as absurd that the movements move-ments of its composing parts should be directed by authorities independent of each other as that in actual warfare each general should conceive and execute exe-cute his own plan of campaign with a view to the general good. He subsequently subse-quently went far by the development of I this conviction. At the time when the I Belgian college was established in I Rome, and when the Belgian bishops had expressed their wish that it should be managed by themselves. Mgr. Pecci opposed their wishes as the rejresenta-tivo rejresenta-tivo of Gregory XVI.. demolished their reasons by' argument, overcame iheir objections by persuasion, and brought the whole matter to a successful issue and to final accomplishment with singularly sin-gularly good judgment and energy. Soon after this. Mgr. PecCi was appointed ap-pointed Bishop of Perugia, to the very great surprise of himself and his friends. The career of the Nunciature was, and is in a measure still, regarded regard-ed as very distinct from the ecclesiastical ecclesias-tical hierarchy. It was of high political po-litical importance and of the utmost consequence to the Church, the most gifted men were chosen for it, and it was the short road to the Cardinalate. Soon after the election of Pope Pius IX, Mgr. Pecci took possession of his new diocese as Bishop of Perugia, still keeping and using the title of Archbishop. Arch-bishop. As an ex-Nuncio always does, he took possession on July 26, 1846, with the outward state still maintained in those days, preceded by trumpeters, himself riding at a foot pace on a caparisoned ca-parisoned horse, under a canopy car-I car-I ried by scholars from the seminary, j while children: strewed the road with I flowers and the clergy and civil officials i accompanied him in formal procession. He had begun the march by praying , in the Church of Our Lady of Angels at ! Assisi, where St. Francis is buried, and the function ended with his first pastoral pas-toral address and episcopal benediction in the Cathedral of Perugia. Those who know Italy well need no description of such a procession; to those who have never lived there it is hard to describe one. The scorching sun of the summer's day beats upon a blazing blaz-ing river of dust that sends up little choking clouds as the old canons shuffle shuf-fle along, 'some fiery red and perspiring with the heat, some deadly pale; the little children, in white dresses spangled span-gled with tinsel and adorned with gaudily painted wings that bob in a most un-angelic manner at every step. I scatter blossoms that spread a faint j and sickly scent through the air; long wax torches burn with futile flames that are shadows against the enormous glare rather than points-f'-f light, and the smell of the candles mingle. with the odor of the flowers anci ungent perfume per-fume of incense in the universal heat. Canons intone, boys sing, old men drone, all the bells are ringing, and from time to time the quick fire of innumerable in-numerable little iron mortars drowns all other sounds in a terrific din. In the crowd, one may always see the contrasts of look and temperament that make Italians the most interesting interest-ing race in the world ;aees full of in- j nocent delight in heat and color and noise, faces betraying passion, sudden, violent, ever ready to break out: faces j expressive ot deep and melancholy thought. They are to be found in every Italian crowd. In the midst of them all on that particular day one may easily call up the eagle features, the burning eyes, the thin and olive tinted countenance of the young Bishop, who I had last been seen there as civil gov- I ernor, and who was come to spend a third of hia life and almost a third of a century among those who now watched him. At the first sight that long period may seem to present little interest; the humble labors of the best ecclesiastics rarely make much outward impression upon the world at iarf". Ther U nothing noth-ing thrilling in the daily routine by which the poor country clergy are governed gov-erned and directed; at most, there is something gravely f touching in the thought that the Bishop's hands are laid in confirmation upon the head of every child in the diocese that grows up cut of infancy, and that the children, chil-dren, after all, come nearest to him in his pastoral office. Mgr. Pecci, indeed, did; more, for he gave them schools and labored for the colleges, and thrust his enormous energy into the battle for a better condition. Educational labors seem to have occupied oc-cupied his time almost exclusively, and almost every anecdoto of him during thirty years turns in some way upon matters of teaching, while his leisure moments appear to have been altogether altogeth-er devoted to literature. When Mgr. Pecci had entered Perugia as bishop, the Papal sovereignty seemed endowed with a good lease of life as the ally of a general Italian federation, and the name of Pius IX. was a rallying cry to the nationalist party. In two years Rome was a republic re-public and the Pope a fugitive. Restored, Re-stored, protected by Louis Napoleon, aband-oned at last by France after the cataclysm of Sedan, he became a prisoner, pri-soner, and created the precedent which his successor would have been forced to follow, even had he not approved it. The temporal power was at an end, and Mgr. Pecci was still bishop of Perugia, as pitilessly confined there by Antonel-li's Antonel-li's hatred as the Pope was1 confined by force of circumstances. "Say a good word for the poor man who has lived here so long in exile."" Thus spoke the bishop to a great lady who was going to Rome and was to sea the Pope in private audience. Such a man must have been almost broken hearted to use such words. During two and thirty years he labored in his see for the good, cause of teaching, and while he spent himself in ceaseless hard work he formed his opinion upon great events that were the life of his times, ar.d doubtless he often told himself how-he how-he would have acted had he stood in the place of others. Let us sum up the course of his occupations during those years from 1S4G to 1878. He aimed principally at reforming the courses of teaching in literature. He restored the study of Greek and greatly extended that of Italian. Before his time Italian poetry had been proscribed In the seminary of Perugia, from a mis-; mis-; taken idea that it might do harm to lxys and young men. The bishop completely com-pletely changed all this and used his influence in-fluence and example to promote the study of Dante and Manzoni. Mgr. Erunelli, who was a student at that time, ar.il to whom I am indebted for thetso details, remembers and describes i how the bishop used to declaim aad j j explain how long passages from tne tragedies of Alpira, giving his hearers j by way of commentary his own recollections recol-lections of the sottus in which they I were laid. Dante was his favorite mas- ter and author, and he directed tiia t the class should learn and explain every I week a canto of the Divine Comedy, long before the study of the ponrn was required by the government. He knew the greater part of it by heart, and gave special prizes to those who made themselves familiar with it. At the ex- j aminations he held, he frequently, and without the aid of any text, recited long extracts from Latin authors to illustrate il-lustrate what he said, preferring among these Virgil. Horace and Cicero, from whom he often quoted both to teachers and scholars the well-known saying. "Tantum scimus quantum mtimoriae mandamus." About eight miles to westward of Perugia, Pe-rugia, and not far from Lake ThrasL mene, stands the ancient summer residence resi-dence of the bishops known from time immevmorial as "Pieve del Vescovo." In the troubles and confiscation of church property which followed the annexation annexa-tion of Perugia to the kingdom of Italy, in 1S6D, the cardinal-bishop succeeded in saving this place from the hands of the new government, and, as an inscription to that effect in the main hall sets forth in admirable Latin, he restored and improved it at his own expense. Thirty-two years of such a life as Cardinal Pecci spent in Perugia were a fitting introduction to a civilizing and enlightening Pontificate: but there seems little in that long period which can account for the singular energy and j keen comprehension with which he grasped the political situation of Europe Eu-rope as soon as he became Pope. It j must not-be forgotten, however, that I during hia episcopate all the great events which, changed the geography of Europe, from the revolutions of 1818 to the fall of Louis Napoleon, the creation cre-ation of the German empire and the final unification of Italy under a monarchy, mon-archy, were enacted like a vast play of which he himself was a wise and unprejudiced un-prejudiced spectator. More than once I during that time the tide of revolution awc.pt over Perugia, leaving traces and memories behind it which could neither be overlooked nor lost. Joachim Pecci had spent an ordinary lifetime in faithfully working for such immediate good ends as he saw before him, and when, nearly 70 years of age. he contemplated witndrawing himself from the sphere of his long- labors in i order to spend the short time that presumably- remained to him in solcimn j preparation for a peaceful death, it was ordered ptherwise. His lifelong work had prepared ret for rest, but for a greater activity: not for leaving the world, but for entering it as a leader; not for death, but for life. |