CAVOUR, CAMILLO BENSO di - Autograph letter from C. C. to Massimo d'Azeglio (Feb. 1856) - Rome, archive of the Istituto per la storia del Risorgimento.
The Holy See neither encouraged nor opposed Passaglia's mission, but ordered him to maintain strict secrecy about the matter, fearing that it would be exploited to its detriment. As indeed happened; for as soon as Passaglia was in Turin, the newspapers began to speak of conciliation negotiations under way. So that a note in the official journal of Rome came to deny the groundless rumors, and at the same time to cut short the initiative, in which so little good faith was seen. From overwhelming evidence it emerges that C., at the very time he was initiating these approaches, did not shrink from weaving intrigues to corrupt with money Cardinal Antonelli and other influential prelates. Moreover, the instructions he sent to the two negotiators in Rome and the related drafts of articles (op. cit., pp. 253, 260, 275) appear conceived in a spirit entirely different from that of the bases agreed upon with Passaglia, although C. said he had remained "in agreement with him on all points." Clerics are subjected to the common law without any regard for the privilegium fori; civil personality is denied to religious corporations and institutes; it is required that episcopal appointments take place according to an elective system to be arranged between the two powers, with the government reserving for itself in certain cases the right of veto, as well as the right to intervene in the first appointments; provision is made autonomously for the endowment of bishoprics, chapters and parish churches; the bishoprics are reduced from about 260 to the number of 80; benefice properties are tied up in such a way that they cannot be increased without the placet of the civil authority, etc. If to all this one adds the condition imposed on the Pope (do ut des) of renouncing the temporal power, in such a way as to leave no doubt "about the reality and actual efficacy of the renunciation," one will be able to judge what ideal value can be given to the Cavourian formula: "a free Church in a free State." With it nothing is affirmed but the mentality of Marco Minghetti, who, starting from the principle that only the State possesses, in a true and exclusive sense, legislative and coercive power, and that every other authority that prevails within the ambit of the State must be subordinated to it, implicitly excludes the thesis of the two powers and the two liberties, and places religious society, like every other society, under the control and authority of the State; to which, in fact, though incompetent in the spiritual field, belongs the right to recognize the juridical personality of the Church and therefore to subject its activity to control.
Once the attempt at agreements undertaken by C. had fallen through, even before the negotiations had begun, the modus vivendi devised by Napoleon III returned to the field, having as its basis a direct understanding between Paris and Turin, by virtue of which the king's government was to bind itself to guarantee the integrity of the small territory remaining to the Pontiff, leaving unprejudiced the rights that the Holy See claimed over the other annexed territories; and it further bound itself to take upon itself a share of the public debt of the papal government in proportion to the annexed territories. For the Holy See, remaining extraneous to the agreements, there remained nothing but to take note of them, if it so wished, when they were communicated to it. After which France would withdraw its troops from Rome and grant its recognition to the Kingdom of Italy. One can well imagine how distasteful such a convention must have been to C.; but he had to bow to the will of the emperor. Everything was already prepared, and nothing was lacking but the signature of the high parties, when the death of the great statesman came like a thunderbolt.
It has remained shrouded in mystery until now whether C. died in the bosom of the Catholic Church. It was then officially announced that he had passed away fortified by the Sacraments: at which Pius IX rejoiced and, as La Civiltà Cattolica announced, did not fail to have more suffrage masses said for him. In many churches, in Italy and abroad, funeral services had been celebrated, when a declaration by Marquis Gustavo, Camillo's brother, appeared in the newspapers, denying the report of the count's retraction before dying. Several bishops and nuncios then turned to Rome asking for instructions; and from Rome the ecclesiastical authority of Turin was asked how things had really gone. But Fr. Giacomo da Poirino, who, as previously agreed, had been called to assist C. in his last moments, shut himself up in a mysterious silence. Suspecting that this happened out of fear of reprisals, he was summoned to Rome and questioned personally by Pius IX. The friar, on the vain pretext that it was a matter of sacramental secrecy, refused to say anything, limiting himself to declaring that, as for himself, he had done his whole duty. Everything that was then said and published in the newspapers about the constraints and threats to which Fr. Giacomo would have been subjected in order to wrest the secret from him is pure invention. Now there is a tendency to believe that Fr. Giacomo had been called to the deathbed of the dying man when the latter was in the grip of delirium, and that his ministry was simply pro forma, for purely political convention.
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Pietro Pirri