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ADDRESS
TO
PJ)PE PIUS IX.
ON HIS
ENCYCLICAL LETTER.
BY
JOSEPH MAZZINI.
LONDON:
TEUBNER AND CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1865.
PRICE
SIXPENCE.
�M m im w
—
�ADDRESS TO
POPE
PIUS
IX.
i.
By your last Encyclica you have flung your Anathema
over the civilized world, over its movement, over the
life which inspires it, as if the world, life, and move
ment were not things of God. As the tempest-tossed
mariner, seeing the waves rising higher and higher
around him, despoils himself, in desperation, even of
the things most needful to man, so you* maddened
by the restless terrors that surround the death-agony
of a despairing sinner, have thrown aside all spirit
of love, all sense of the sacredness of this Earth,
providentially designed to perfect litself, all idea of
progress defined or indicated by Christianity, all the
traditions which for eight centuries have constituted
the Papacy’s right to live, all that can make Authority
revered, and powerful for good.
The tone of those ill-advised pages is one of grief
and anger; but it is a dry and barren sorrow breathing
the egotism of one who sees his power threatened,
1—2
�4
assailed, condemned, the pitiful anger of one who
longs to doom his assailants to the faggot, but knows
himself powerless to do so.
Lost for ever in the judgment of mankind, unable
to rule a single day unsustained by the bayonet;
abandoned by the world which no longer recognizes
its spring of life in you—incapable either of self
transformation or of resignation, you expire—saddest
of all deaths—with a curse upon your lips.
Tempered by Nature to surround every great ruin
with a lingering affection, reverencing the Tradition of
Humanity and all the elements that compose it, pre
cisely because I long for and have faith in the Future,
—I had dreamed of a different death for the Institution
whose last days you are now hastening. Seventeen
years ago, you were surrounded by an applauding
Europe bidding you 11 Onward.” Before you was a
people, the Italian people, newly awakened to con
sciousness of their high destiny, who would have
served you both as arm and lever in the great work of
transformation. A single word of love from you, a
blessing called down upon Italy—so long unlooked for
from a Pope—would have been sufficient. Millions of
souls, forgetting the profanations, persecutions, and
corruptions of four centuries, would have rallied round
you, thrilling with expectant hope and blind belief.
At that time, although incredulous of any revival
of the past, yet thinking a benediction and a word of
new life from the dying Institution might prevent long
years of anarchy and rebellion,—I wrote to you:
“ Believe, and unify Italy. If God wills that old faiths
should now transform themselves; that, .starting from the
�5
foot of the Cross, dogma and worship should purify them
selves, and advance one step nearer to Cod the Father and
Educator of the World—you may, by placing yourself
between the two epochs, lead mankind to the conquest and
practice of religious truth.”1
I should have wished that mindful of the words of
Jesus :—Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come,
he will guide you unto all truth: for he shall not
speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that
shall he speak; and he will show you the things to
come,1 and understanding their sublime presentiment
2
that for direct revelation through the individual, sub
stitutes the continuous collective revelation through
Humanity—you might have said to the peoples, “ The
Spirit is with you if only you will seek after and
hearken unto it: it is where universal Tradition and
individual conscience accord; most gloriously revealed
where Genius and Virtue unite, and I am nothing
but one believer among millions.”
I could have wished that an Institution beneficent
and life-giving in the past, should have blessed in
dying the emancipation of souls, and taught that death
in the future will be the consummation of one mission,
and the initiation of another.
I could have wished that as men bow the head
before the death of Genius, and are moved to poetry
by the sinking of the sun into the invisible infinite, so
might they have learned through you to hail with
solemn and reverent affection the going-down of the
past.
1 Lettera a Pio IX., 8 Settembre, 184=7.
2 John xvi. 13.
�It was an illusion. It is decreed, perhaps to pre
vent mankind, ever unstable in their conception of
life, from losing themselves in the worship of the
dead past, that the last inheritors of worn-out Insti
tutions should present the hideous spectacle of one
who in dying clings convulsively to life, and resists in
impotent blasphemy God’s law of transformation.
So dies the Papacy. So will you die: powerless
to resuscitate life; unable to comprehend the solemnity
of death.
II.
Look around you. To whom do you speak?
Who now has faith in your words ? Foreign soldiers
protect you from the anger of your own subjects, and
those soldiers are the children of Voltaire, unbelievers
and materialists like their Master. They protect you
as the tools of a policy of dominion, seeking to gain
credit with the French Clergy, and to keep open the
way for the division of Italy into three. Were they
to leave you, you would have to try to defend your
self with a*rabble rout of mercenaries from every
country in Europe, or you would have to leave with
them. Your allies are the Neapolitan brigands; they
wear your crosses and your indulgences upon their
breasts; but cease to pay them for a single month, and
suppose that we could sink so low as to hire them in
our turn, and they would fight against you. The men
who hedge themselves around you, who flatter you,
and hail you as Pope, King, and Father of Souls,
would desert you; denying both you and your faith,
�7
the day on which you should’ remain without Princely
aid, alone with the people you call yours. I heard
that people’s curses upon your madness some sixteen
years ago, when we inhabited your rooms in Rome;
and there was one who, while the French hemmed us
in, secretly conspired for you, and was afterwards con
demned for theft by your own judges, came to me,
terrified by the solitude in which he found himself, to
reveal his three or four accomplices. I smiled, and
let him go free.
Of such stamp were then and are now the
believers in you, whilst those. of our faith died cheer
fully with the words “ God and the People,” on their
lips.
Some among the reigning ones of the earth, also
threatened by their dissatisfied subjects, send their
ambassadors to pay you hypocritical homage as Christ’s
Vicar, because their authority is founded upon the
same basis as yours; but no sooner does Christ’s
Vicar venture to interfere even in the most timid and
hesitating manner in their affairs, than they doff their
hypocrisy and prohibit their! bishops from publishing
your Encyclica. Numbers of those who were formerly
believing Catholics in Europe, still preserve the old
habits, and follow the rites and discipline of your
Church, partly because even the dead forms of a
Great Religion that is past, exercise a prestige over
the mind; and partly because mankind—which has
and always will have need of religion—abhors the
barrenness of scepticism, and clings to the Traditions
of the past rather than be driven into mere negation.
But when, in 1849, we aroused the people of Raly
�to a sense of their dignity as men, and called upon
them to elect an Assembly to represent them and
decree your fate, they sent a Republican Assembly to
Rome, which unanimously abolished your power.
And when you and yours endeavoured from Gaeta
to raise up the populations against that Assembly in
the name of the Catholic faith, it was only at
Ascolani—where escape into the Neapolitan territory
was certain—that you found some who for a few
days were willing to risk their lives for you.
An echo of the Catholic Tradition still lingers in
the souls of men, but faith in it is dead for ever. You
cannot yourself rekindle it even in your own heart.
The virtue of sacrifice has left you. Your Church has
lost the power of suffering, and of dying, if need be,
for the salvation of mankind. Before the dangers of a
difficult position created by yourself, your adherents
concealed themselves : you fled, and fled in disguise.
Who henceforth would die for a Pope transformed into
the lackey of the Countess of Spaur ?
Faith is dead. Your Authority is but the ghost of
Authority, and the terror inspired by the spectre has
been diminishing for four centuries. It is for us now,
free from every doubt, strong in the irrevocable assent
of Humanity, to take up the gauntlet with the
certainty of Victory.
In saying “for us,” I include all who, like me,
reject alike the barren negations of the unreflectingly
rebellious, who, because one form of religion is
exhausted, imagine that the eternal religious Life of
Humanity is destroyed, and the inefficacious preteUces
of a Church which has neither knowledge, will, nor
�9
power any longer to direct that Life; I include all
vvho, like me, abhor the loathsomeness of materialism,
and are ready to do battle against it in the name of
the Ideal; all who reverently seek the City of the
Future, a new Heaven and a new Earth destined to
gather together in the name and in the love of God
and of man, and in faith in a common aim, all those
who now wander through your fault, mid fear of the
present and doubt of the future, in moral and intel
lectual anarchy : I include those who know that from
epoch to epoch God utters a new syllable of eternal
Truth to Humanity that every religion is ah initiation
towards the one destined to succeed it; and that an
educational revelation ceaselessly descends in manner
varying with the times upon the Nations J that to
arbitrarily seek to limit that revelation to a given
fraction of time# to one sole people, or to a single
individual is the only heresy essentially denying God,
the' manifestation of His Life, and the unbroken and
continuous link existing between the Divine Thought
and Humanity, which is destined gradually to discover
and to incarnate that Thought upon earth.
I include all those whoianxiously interrogating the
signs of the Times, and observing on the one hand
the constant increase of egotism, the dissolution of
every Power, the impotence of every ancient authority ;
and on the other the universal agitation of the peoples,
the growing though confused aspirations of intel
ligence, the apparition of new elements demanding
admission into the social edifice, and. of new words
potent to move the multitudes, the tendency towards
a new morality vaster than the former, and recognize
�10
in all these things the indications of a new epoch, and
therefore of a religious transformation.
Finally, I include all who hail with me the idea
that the initiative of that inevitable transformation
may sooner or later be taken by a People now for the
first time called to National Unity.
We take up the gauntlet flung down to the world
by your Encyclica. We take it up, not in the name of
a blind misguided analysis which . confounds the
Thought with its manifestation, and Life with the
organs by which it is revealed ;—not in the name of
a philosophy that presumes to substitute itself for the
Religious Synthesis, while its true historic office is
merely that of verifying the exhaustion of one belief
and preparing the way for another ;—but in the name
of Religion itself, which you would annihilate by
dooming it to immobility,—of Morality, which should
be enlarged from epoch to epoch, and which you
destroy by enchaining it to a dogma, the narrowness
and imperfection of which has been demonstrated by
four centuries of discovery;—in the name of the
teachings of Tradition, showing that the Religious
Idea assumes different forms and a different worship
at each stage of the education of Humanity;—in the
name of Jesus who foretold the future triumphs of the
Spirit1 through his own death, and whom you would
degrade from the “ Master ” to the tyrant of man ;—
in the name of Human Life which has need of harmo
nization, unification, and sanctification through Reli
gion, of all of which you deprive it by condemning its
1 John xvi.
�11
I*
i
progressive manifestations, and maintaining a fatal
duality between Earth and Heaven ;—and in the name
of God Himself who is eternal Life, Thought, Motion,
and Enlightenment, and to Whose power of revelation
you would assign a limit and a date.
Religion is with us, not with you. You mate
rialize it by the exclusive adoration of one of its forms,
as if the living God could be enchained in a single
form ; as if any form of Religion could ever be other
than a finite symbol of the Truth which He dispenses
in the chosen measure of time > as if when one form
were exhausted, it were possible that God should
perish, or withdraw Himself from the world which is
naught other than a manifestation of His Thought;
as if it were possible to assign ^limit to the Thought
of God; as if any people, any epoch, or any religion
might presume to have comprehended that Thought
entire ; as if Humanity were not bound constantly to
labour and to advance in order to acquire a knowledge
of, and identify itself with, that portion of the Divine
Idea destined to be realized on earth.
III.
We believe in God, who is Intellect and Love,
Educator and Lord:
We believe therefore in a sovereign Moral Law,
the expression of His Intellect, and of His Love:
We believe in a law of Duty for all of us, and that
we are bound to love, to comprehend, and, as far as
possible, to incarnate that law in our actions :
We believe that the sole manifestation of God
�12
visible to us is Life, and in it we seek the evidences of
the Divine Law:
We believe that as God is one, so is Life one, and
one the Law of Life throughout its twofold manifesta
tion in the Individual and in Collective Humanity:
We believe in Conscience—the revelation of Life in
the Individual—and in Tradition—the revelation of
Life in Humanity,—as the sole means given to us by
God by which to comprehend his Design,' and that
when the voice of Conscience and the voice of Tradi
tion are harmonized in an affirmation, that affirmation
is the Truth, or a portion of the Truth.
We believe that Conscience and Tradition, if reli
giously interrogated, will reveal to us that the Law
of Life is Progress, progress indefinite in all the
manifestations of. Being, the germs of which, inherent
in Life itself—are gradually and successively developed
throughout the various phases of existence :
We believe that as Life is one, and the Law of
Life is one, the Progress destined to be wrought out
by Collective Humanity, and gradually revealed to us
through Tradition, must be equally wrought out by the
individual, and since that indefinite progress forefelt
and conceived by Conscience and proclaimed by Tradi
tion, cannot be completely realized in the brief ter
restrial existence of the individual, we believe it will be
»
fulfilled elsewhere, and we believe in the continuity of
the Life made manifest in each of us, and of which our
terrestrial existence is but one period:
We believe that as in Collective Humanity every
presentiment of a vaster and purer ideal, every earnest
aspiration towards Good, is destined—it may be after
�13
the lapse of ages—to be realized,—so in the indi
vidual, every intuition of the Truth, every aspiration—
even if at present inefficacious—towards Good, and
towards the Ideal, is a pledge of future development,
a germ to be evolved in the course of the series of
existences constituting Life:
We believe that as Collective Humanity in its
-advance gradually acquires a knowledge and compre
hension of its own past;—so will the individual in
his advance upon the path of Progress acquire in pro
portion to the degree of moral education achieved, the
consciousness and memory of the past stages of his
existence:
We believe not only in Progress, but in Man’s
solidarity in progress: that as in Collective Humanity
the generations are linked one with the other, and the
Life of the one fortifies, assists, and promotes the life of
the other—so, also, is individual linked with individual,
and the life of one is of benefit to the life of the rest,
both here and elsewhere :
We believe that pure, virtuous, and constant affec
tion is a promise of communion in the future, and
a lint—invisible but powerful in its effect upon bn man
action—between the dead and the living :
We believe that Progress, the Law of God, must
infallibly be achieved by all, but we believe that we are
bound to work out the consciousness of that progress
and to deserve it through our own efforts, and that
time and space are vouchsafed to us by God as the
sphere of free will, wherein we merit or demerit in
proportion as we accelerate or delay it:
We believe, therefore, in human free will, the
condition of human responsibility:
�14
We believe in Human Equality, that is to say, that
God has given to all mankind the faculties and powers
necessary to the achievement of an equal amount of
progress; we believe that all are both called and
elected to achieve it, sooner or later, according to their
own works :
i
We believe that all that tends to impede Human
Progress, Equality, and Solidarity, is Evil, and that all
that tends to promote them, is Good.
We believe in the duty of each and all ceaselessly
to combat evil, and to promote good by thought and
action ; we believe that in order to overcome evil and to
promote good in each of us, it is necessary to overcome
evil and to promote good in others and for others : We
believe that no man can work out his own salvation
otherwise than by labouring for the salvation of others:
We believe that the sign of Evil is egotism, and the
sign of Virtue, sacrifice:
We believe our actual existence to be a step towards
a future existence, the earth to be a place of trial
wherein, by overcoming Evil and promoting Good, we
are bound to deserve to advance : We believe it to be
the duty of each and all to sanctify the earth by
realizing here as much as it is possible to realize of
the Law of God: And from this faith we deduce our
Morality:
We believe that the instinct of Progress innate in
Humanity from the beginning, and now become a
leading tendency of the human intellect, is the sole
revelation of God to mankind ; a revelation vouchsafed
to all, and continuous :
We believe that it is in virtue of this revelation
�15
that Humanity advances from epoch to epoch, from
religion to religion, upon the path of improvement
assigned to it:
We believe that whosoever presumes at the present
day to arrogate that revelation to himself, and declare
that he is the privileged intermediate between God
and man, is a blasphemer.
We believe that Authority is sacred when, conse
crated by Genius and Virtue,—sole Priests of the
Future—and made manifest by the greatest power
of sacrifice,—it preaches Truth, and is freely accepted
by mankind as their guide to Truth; but we believe
that we are bound to combat and exterminate as the
offspring of Falsehood and Parent of Tyranny, every
Authority not invested with these characteristics :
We believe that God is God, and Humanity is His
Prophet.
Such, in its broad outlines, is our faith. In that
faith we reverentially embrace—as stages of the pro
gress already achieved—all the manifestations of Religion
in the past, and—as symptoms and previsions of future
progress—every earnest and virtuous manifestation of
religious Thought in the present.
In that faith we recognize God as the Father of
all; Humanity as one in community of origin, of law,
and of aim; the Earth as sanctified by the gradual
accomplishment of the Divine Design, and the indi
vidual—blessed with immortality, free will, and power
—as the responsible Artificer of his own progress.
In this faith we live; in it we will die; in it we
love, labour, hope, and pray.
In the name of this faith we bid you : Descend
�16
FROM THE SEAT
YOU USURP AT
THE PRESENT DAY ,*
and, verily, you will descend before this age has run
its course.
The faith promulgated in your Encyclica of the
8th December, 1864, renounces alike Earth and
Heaven, Humanity and the individual.
God is Affirmation, absolute : You pretend to sub
sist upon negatives alone.
With the errors against which you cry Anathema
in the 1st, 2ncT, and 3rd of the articles annexed to the
Encyclica, we have naught to do. We believe that the
sole source of Sovereignty is in God, and in His Law,
and we therefore reject alike the Pantheism that con
founds God with the manifestations of His Power, and
every Authority.which is not the realization of the Law
of God on earth.
Neither have we aught to do with those articles
among the long series you have published, which treat
of the old question—consequent upon the Christian
duality—between the Temporal and Spiritual Au
thority.
We believe in one sole Power, the dominion of the
Moral Law, and from it we deduce the legitimacy or
illegitimacy of every temporal Authority.
We believe in the Church, the fraternity of
believers, guardian and progressive discoverer of the
Law. But is that Church your Church ? Are you
the Depositary of that Authority which all of us
invoke as Supreme over every Power ?
�17
IV.
No : your Church only gathers around it a fraction
of mankind, a fraction diminishing daily. For six
centuries past, your Authority has neither generated,
directed, nor promoted Life. You deny the faculties
you are bound to direct; you deny—by denying the
work to be accomplished on earth—the instruments
given to us by God for its accomplishment. You
deny the initiation contained in Christianity towards
higher things. You deny the free action of Man,
without which there is neither merit nor demerit.
You deny (Art. 80) that you have any mission to
promote the civilization and progress of mankind.
You deny the giftfe of God to us all by substituting
for them a grace arbitrarily bestowed upon a few. You
deny the immortality of the life given by God, by
the decapitation of the Soul in Hell. You deny the last
ing communion of God with His creatures by decreeing
a dual Humanity, the Humanity of the Fall, and the
Humanity of the Redemption. You deny Morality
by denying our power to constitute—as far as in us
lies—the Kingdom of God on earth, and by allowing
our brother men to remain a prey to tyranny, misery,
ignorance, and injustice. You deny to the Nations
their right of affirming their own free life, of frater
nizing for mutual benefit with their sister Nations,
and of choosing Rulers deserving of their Trust.
You do but affirm one thing—that you have a
right to be a Prince, and to possess—without incurring
any responsibility towards Humanity—those worldly
goods which you bid us despise.
2
�18
There was a time—a time I regard with reverence
—when the Papacy did affirm and guide. Depositaries
and Guardians of the Moral Law; believing in their
mission of Justice and Liberty for all; intrepid against
all who sought to violate their power,—and ready to
suffer for their faith, which then was the faith of the
peoples,—the Popes, from the fifth to the thirteenth
century, aided and promoted the progress you now
condemn.
In that Rome they had taught the barbarian to
respect, they represented the Ideal of the Epoch, the
dominion of spirit over matter; love, opposed to brute
force; the equality of souls,—individual merit set up
against arbitrary power ;—election against birth; justice
against feudal and monarchical rute. They watched
over and preserved the relics of ancient Learning in
their Convents, they protected Art, consoled and
alleviated suffering, educated antagonistic races, and
called them to brotherhood in the name of God and
Jesus.
Then might Leo truly declare to Rome, the centre
of a second civilization :—“ Although thou hast by thy
many victories extended thy empire over land and sea, thou
hast conquered less by valour in war than by the spirit of
Christian peaces”^ -V
' X
Then did Nicholas I. write word to the Bishops:—
‘‘ Observe whether the Kings and Princes be truly such;
if they govern rightly, first themselves, and then the peoples:
Observe if they reign according to justice ; because if they
do not, we must view them not as Kings, but as Tyrants,
and arise against them, and against the vices by which
they are corrupted.”
�19
Then did Innocent III. dare to declare to a power
ful Seigneur :—“ Were we but to take into consideration
your crimes, we should not only cry Anathema upon you,
but should call upon your people to arm themselves against
you;” and the Seigneur humbled himself before the
menace.
And before these, a man of gigantic heart and
mind—though misunderstood even yet by the majority
amongst us—the son of the people, Gregory VII., had
declared to the world that “ the sword of the Prince
must be laid doivn, as all human things bow down, before
the Church of God ; the King owes obedience to the Pope.
The Apostolic Authority is as the Sun ; the regal power is
as the Moon, illumined by the reflection of its ray;” and
the people hailed that lofty doctrine with applause,
and the Teutonic Monarchy prostrated itself in peni
tence for its attempted resistance, before the Italian
Pope in Canossa.
But the Popes of that day were the representatives
of a Duty. A Bishop then declared, in Orleans, that
“ the rich and powerful were bound to recognize the equal
nature of the poor and servile, because one sole God reigned
from on high over all.”
Gregory VII. justified the boldness of his acts
by the holy confession that “ the Church had sinned,
because it had allied itself to the world and to worldly
men, because its ministers had sought to serve the Church
and the world at the same time;—that Churchmen were
culpable and unworthy; and that they were bound to
correct and convert themselves £ that regeneration must
begin from the highest among them; that he felt bound to
declare war to vice, and to unmask it to the world; to
�20
protect all who were persecuted for justice and virtue’s
sake; that all belonging to the Church were bound to show
themselves pure and irreproachable ; and that it was
reserved for the Pope to achieve the great work of esta
blishing the reign of Peace on Earth.”
But you are both a Prince and the servant of
Princes at the present day; the bayonets that con
ducted you back through blood to Borne belong to
the man of the 2nd of December. You reign through
force, not through faith : your party is corrupt and
corrupting ; the Sanctuary is surrounded by Neapolitan
brigands upon whom you confer your blessing, while
you have no word of comfort for the peoples who
invoke God’s liberty and equality.
Therefore do the peoples look, not to you, but to
us; to us, the Precursors of the New Church; to us,
who teach them both by word and example, that it is
possible to fulfil God’s Law on earth.
Your predecessors conquered the Nations in the
name of a Religion of spiritual liberty and equality;
you do but persuade, from time to time, some unhappy
maiden to accept the death of the Cloister while
yearning for life, or steal some neglected son of Israel
and display him in triumph to the multitude as a
Convert.
I know that Gregory VII. failed to realize his
sublime conception of the triumph of the ideal over
the material on earth. I know that the instruments
he sought to employ were unequal to the aim. ' The
cardinal point of the dogma upon which he leaned
for support was the duality, the antagonism between
Earth and Heaven, and it was impossible to found
Human Unity upon that dogma.
�21
Instead of teaching that Religion is Life itself, it
made of Religion a compensation for life, and taught
the individual that he must achieve his salvation
independently of the earth, and set before him an
ideal impossible of realization in the brief years of
terrestrial existence. It can only be realized progres
sively through Association, and that dogma in no way
contemplated association; it contained no conception
of the Collective Life of Humanity, nor of the law of
Progress we now recognize.
Gregory VII. was therefore compelled to have
recourse to despotic means: he failed in his en
terprise, nor could it be successfully renewed by any
Pope.
But though it was forbidden that the Popes should
guide the world upon the path indicated by the vaster
and more unifying dogma now dawning upon us, they
might have accompanied the world in its advance
towards it; they might and ought, like Gregory«¥II.,
ever ready to suffer martyrdom, to have remained the
Representatives of that portion of the Truth contained
in their own dogma, which owes its actual triumph to
its incarnation in us. Christianity did not ordain
association on this earth, but it laid the foundations
for it by declaring: “ There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither lond nor free, there is neither male nor
female ; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”1
Jesus did not institute any Government of the
things of this world, but He laid down the principle
of all legitimate Government when He said : “ WhoPaul: Galatians iii. 28.
�22
soever will be great among you, let him be your minister;
and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your
servant.”1
Jesus commanded endeavour and research,2 He
promised all things to labour,3 He understood and
reverenced the power of man,4 He foresaw the future,
the Epoch of Truth freed from every earthly symbol.3
Your predecessors might and ought, you might
and ought to have accompanied us upon the path
of discovery and advance, in order to have left us,
as Moses left his people, on the borders of the pro
mised land, and have blessed us in dying even as a
dying father blesses the children who are to survive
him. You expire cursing the spirit of inquiry, cursing
the power of intellect, cursing faith in the discovery of
the Truth, cursing the peoples who seek their freedom,
cursing mankind and Life itself^ An Apostate from
Jesus and Humanity, you condemn yourself to expire
in isolation, deprived of all communion with your
brother men. We are compelled mournfully to cast
back the Anathema upon yourself. We may say to you
—as the French Bishops said to Gregory IV.—you
came to excommunicate us, return excommunicated.
No : Religion is no longer with you. Before the
Popes were, before Jesus came, God was with us.
God is with us, the servants of His Law, who carry
out the Tradition which is the revelation of His
Design. From the days of Innocent III., the Papacy
renounced alike life and mission, to worship self, its
1 Matt. xx. 26, 27, 28.
2 Matt. vii. 7; x. 26, 27, 28.
3 Matt. xxi. 43.
4 Matt. xxi. 21, 22.
5 John xiv. 16, 17, &c.
�23
own Power, the World. From the days of Innocent
III., Knowledge is ours, Art is ours, Progress in
intellect and in the purer adoration of God, is ours.
In the face of your decrees, and cancelling the sen
tence of your Inquisition, we discovered the laws that
rule the Stars, the ages of the earth’s existence
anterior to the Biblical hypothesis, the continuity of
Creation, the Unity of the Law that links earth to
Heaven, the chain of progress extending without inter
ruption from the earliest generations to our own.
Without you, against you—dissolving the dark
ness of the past, we discovered a portion of God’s
revelation in all those religions which you have stig
matized as impostures, a portion of the Design of
God in those epochs anterior to the Cross, upon
which you had cried Anathema, a portion of God’s
power in Worlds of the existence of which you were
ignorant.
Without a word of inspiration or encouragement
from you, and often condemned by you, we, the men
of Progress, did battle against Mahometanism in the
East of Europe, called back Greece to life, diminished
the sufferings of the multitudes, raised the banner
of Liberty among the oppressed Nations, and now,
emancipate the Negroes of America, and create Italy
in the face of your opposition.
Not to you, but to God do the Peoples look for
courage in the struggle, and faith to meet death with
smiles. The martyrs of Duty are found amongst
those whom you term unbelievers: the comforters of
the poor amongst those whom you doom to damna
tion to serve the Princes whose support you seek.
�Naught is left for you but undignified lamentation,
to live a mendicant, and to die cursing, unheeded, and
despised.
Descend then from a throne on which you are no
longer a Pope, hut a vulgar tyrant, upheld by the
soldiers of tyrants. You know that, were not those
soldiers ranged around your Conclave, you would be
the last Pope of Rome. Humanity has worshipped
in the Religion of the Father, and in that of the Son.
Give place to the Religion of the holy Spirit.
V.
*
As Pope, six hundred years of impotence,—the
betrayal of every precept of Christ,—your Church’s
adultery with the wicked Princes of the earth,—the
idolatry of the form substituted for the Spirit of
Religion,—the systematic immorality of the men who
surround you, and the negation of all progress sanc
tioned by yourself as the condition of your existence,
rise in judgment against you.
As Prince, the blood of Rome, and the impos
sibility of your remaining there a single day other than
by brute force, rise in judgment against you.
Reconcile yourself with God. With Humanity
you cannot.
JOSEPH MAZZINI.
January, 1865.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Address to Pope Pious IX on his encyclical letter
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Joseph, Mazzini
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Quanta cura was a papal encyclical, issued December 1864, that was prompted by the September Convention of 1864 agreement between the then newly emerging Kingdom of Italy and the Second French Empire of Napoleon III. France had previously occupied Rome with French troops in order to prevent the Kingdom of Italy from defeating the Papal States with the Capture of Rome. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Includes bibliographical references.
Publisher
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Trubner and Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1865
Identifier
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G5253
Subject
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Papacy
Catholic Church
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Address to Pope Pious IX on his encyclical letter), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Italy-Politics and Government-19th Century
Pope Pius IX
Roman Catholic Church