Prisoner of the Vatican: The Popes' Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State

Kertzer, David I.

ISBN 10: 1400131421 ISBN 13: 9781400131426

Publisher: Tantor Audio, 2004

Synopsis

Based on a wealth of documents long buried in the Vatican archives, Prisoner of the Vatican tells the story of the Church's secret attempt to block the unification of Italy and seize control - not in ancient times, but in the late nineteenth century. For more than fifty years, the pope was a self-imposed prisoner within the Vatican walls, planning to flee Italy, to return only as the restored ruler of Rome and the Papal States. The scheme to dismantle the newborn Italian nation involved not only the cardinals and the Curia but also attempts to exploit the rivalries among France, Germany, Austria, Spain, and England.

Kertzer brings to light an untold drama played out among fascinating characters: Pope Pius IX, the most important pontiff in modern history; King Victor Emmanuel, working behind the backs of his own ministers; the dashing national hero Garibaldi; France's ill-starred Napoleon III, and many more. During this time, Italy was besieged from within and without, and Church history changed forever when the pope was declared infallible for the first time. Prisoner of the Vatican looks deep into the workings of the Church in its final bid to regain the pope's temporal power. Kertzer sweeps readers along with riveting, revelatory panache. No one who reads his new book will ever think of Italy, or the Vatican, in quite the same way again.

About this title

About the Author:

David I. Kertzer is the author most recently of The Popes Against the Jews, which the New York Times hailed as "fascinating ...

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Introduction: Italys Birth and Near Demise Modern Italy, it could be said, was founded over the dead body of Pope Pius IX. Although Italy had been a geographical label since Roman times, the idea that a distinctive Italian people inhabited the boot-shaped peninsula and its islands was more recent, and the notion that they should have an independent state of their own more recent still. Only with the French Revolutions attack on the principles of absolutism and divinely ordained hierarchy could such an idea gain ground, and only with the rise of nationalism as the political creed of the nineteenth century could "Italy for the Italians" become the new watchword. But creating a sense of common Italian identity among the people 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 were in good part mutually unintelligible. In the aftermath of Napoleons defeat in 1814, the Italian nationalist movement faced a peninsula that was divided into a patchwork of states and duchies propped up by foreign forces, the Austrian empire foremost among them. But the nationalists were not entirely discouraged, for they knew that autocratic mini-states were vulnerable to the wrath of their subjects from within and to armies from without. Assorted dukes and kings had painfully learned the latter lesson when Napoleons armies had, not many years earlier, swept through the peninsula and deposed them all. For Italys nationalists, then, the most daunting obstacle was not the Austrian occupation of northeastern It- aly, nor the tottering Bourbon monarchy that ruled all of the South and Sicily, nor the assorted dukes and their duchies. No, there was a far greater power, a far more imposing foe, one that cut the peninsula in two, blocking North from South, its capital the legendary city of Romulus and Remus, the symbol of Italys ancient greatness. For more than a thousand years the popes had ruled over these Papal States, a swath of territory that extended from Rome northward through Umbria and the Marches to Ferrara and Bologna. Deposing the duke of Modena or the grandduke of Tuscany, or even driving the Austrians out of Lombardy and Veneto, was one thing. Deposing the pope from his thousand-year earthly reign was something very different, for the pope, though having little in the way of military might, had weapons that no other ruler could ever hope to wield. What the pope had was the belief - enshrined in official Church dogma and pronounced by parish priests throughout the land - that he ruled over a divinely ordained kingdom as Gods representative on earth. The creation of a unified Italian state, the pope insisted - and in this he had centuries of Church teachings to back him up - was contrary to Gods wishes. It could only be accomplished by force, and anyone taking part in such an assault would be throwing in h

About this edition

• Publisher: Tantor Audio
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1400131421
• ISBN 13: 9781400131426
• Binding: Audio CD