troops landed at Civita Yecchia on the 25th of April, 1849, and besieged the capital, while the Austrians en- tered Italy from the north and the Spaniards from the south. The capital surrendered on the 1st of July; and pending the return of the pope — which did not take place until next year — the government was carried on by a papal commission, a council of state, a council of finances, and provincial councils. The pope returned - in April, 1850, surrounded by the bayonets of a French army, " to a capital torn and ravaged by bombardment, and drenched in the blood of his own subjects, slain for the crime of taking up and earning on the government which he had abdicated." His first act was the perfidy of destroying the constitution of chartered lights which he had guaranteed to his subjects. His second act was the granting of a mock amnesty, the exceptions to which were so framed as to put well-nigh the whole population under ban. The glutted prisons, which it had been his delight to empty at bis first accession, filled up again as before. The Inquisition recommenced its sacred labors. Five hundred citizens were shot or de- capitated and thirty thousand proscribed. Tribunals were established which condemned without trial, and without even open accusation. Speech was gagged, the press was muzzled, the Bible was prohibited. The stir- ring of resistance, provoked by excess of tyranny, was seized as the pretext of wanton barbarity; and the kind- hearted philanthropist of 184(5 became an avenger at Perugia in 1859— a sad and black story, on which it is rather the province of the secular historian to dwell. In 1868, the Austrians broke the concordat and de- clared their spiritual emancipation. The year after, queen Isabella was driven out of Spain, and the govern- ment of the people refused to be bound by any previous treaties with the papacy. In 1870, finally, the war with Prussia destroyed the empire in France, and with the fall of Napoleon not only the French refused to be bound to Rome, but the gates of the Eternal City opened to all Italy. Previous to the entry of the Italian troops. Vic- tor Emmanuel wrote to Pio Nonoa most dutiful and sub- missive letter, offering terms of establishment in Rome which would guarantee his entire spiritual freedom and authority, to which his holiness made characteristic re- ply— the most extraordinary defiance ever uttered in such extremity. Though the king might after this have taken matters in his own hand, he yet accepted an obe- dient relation to the Church, and caused Parliament to guarantee the liberty of the Church and the indepen- dence of the sovereign pontiff on May 13, 1871. Not- withstanding all efforts of Victor Emmanuel for peace, the pope sternly persisted in his firm protest against the inevitable change of things. He steadily refused to receive the Sardinian princes, or to enter into any arrangement with them. He yielded merely to force, and evidently enjoyed his martyrdom much more than Emmanuel did bis victory. For the first year after his dethronement, the pope talked of various changes of residence — of Malta, of Avignon, and even of St. Bonis, lint this was probably never serious. His great age prevented any such adventure, if there were no other reasons against it. He lived retired in the Vatican, and called himself a prisoner. On the 3d of June, 1*77. the Romish Church celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his episcopate, and on Feb. 7, 1878, he died, after a pro- tracted dropsical illness.
Pio Nono's name will always be prominent among Ro- man pontiffs. His long reign proved a contradiction of the traditional words uttered at his coronation— X<>n ri- debis annos Petri. Besides, his interest in archaeological pursuits, and the care he took in aiding in the preserva- tion of the various monuments of Rome and in the em- bellishing of her churches, will hand his name down to remote generations. On the Forum, on the Coliseum, on fountains and in basilicas, the name of Fins IX is carved on large marble slabs, recording the part he has taken in preserving old structures from decay or in building new ones. In the tribune of the grand basilica of San
PIUS
552
PIUS SOCIETIES
Paolo-fuori-le-mura there ia a memorial of one of the proadesl momenta of Pio Nono'a life. An expensive and elegant memorial ia that placed in 1*71 over the well-known bronze Btatue of St. Peter. Those who de- sin- to mii lv its details arc referred to the pag
In 1847 he began the reform of the great religious I i tn June 17 be appointed a commission t<> inquire into the laxity of discipline in religious com- munities, and in tli" issue he bo modified the constitu- tions of several as t" make the period of probation more protracted, and to raise among all the Btandard of discipline and intellectual training. The mi — ions of strengthened, being carried for- ward in partibua infidelium, and great hierarchies, in lands formerly heathen or Protestant, were added to the vast clergy thai owned "the Latin obedience." Tims he provided by brief of 1850 for the ecclesiastical gov- ernment of England, dividing that country int e
metropolitan and twelve episcopal sees; and this was fol- lowed by a pastoral letter of cardinal Wiseman, on his ap- pointmenl as archbishop of Westminster, exulting in the supposed triumph of his Church in the land which had borne of the Reformation for three centuries. Thru he created in this country a vast Roman ( atholic hierarchy by elevating to the cardinalate the archbishop of New Fork in 1875, and prepared the way for the re-es- tablishment of the hierarchy in Scotland, which was ef- fected in 1878. Finally, in 1854, without advice of a council. In- ventured the utterance of a new dogma — the immaculoti conception (q.v.) of the Virgin Mary — and tic audacious promulgation, in 1864, of the bull (liniitiii ('urn, which, with its accompanying "Syl- labus" of damnable errors, was simply an attack on free governments ami civilization itself, and rivalled the spirit and times of Hildebrand. the ecclesiastical abso- lutism of the 11th century. The consecration of these acts in tie Vatican Council of 1870 by the decree of Ih- fallibility (q.v.) was the logical completion of the Ro- mish sy-teui ;uid of the pontificate of Pius IX. The disturbances which have grown out of these steps are