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MISSIONS LIBRARY

PROTESTANTISM AND THE
LATIN SOUL

BY
F. C. CAPOZZI
RECTOR OF SAINT MARY'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH
WIND GAP, PA.

Inscribed
WITH ALL DEVOTION AND REVERENCE
TO
PHILIP MERCER RHINELANDER
BISHOP OF PENNSYLVANIA

PHILADELPHIA
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
1918

FOREWORD
In these days, when in the United States the Protest
ant evangelization of the Latin peoples of South America
is being so much spoken of, it will not be entirely pre
posterous to consider the whole question of Protestant
ism in its relation to the Latin soul.
A study of the causes of the actual failure of Prot
estantism to reach the Latin soul may furnish us with
a criterion by which to judge similar attempts in the
future and, at the same time, help us toward the right
attitude to take in the face of the issues confronting the
Church's missionary movements, in both the foreign and
the domestic field.
These few notes are written from a pre-eminently
Italian standpoint, for Italy, both psychologically and
historically, may be considered the most typical of Latin
countries. A further aim of the book is to acquaint the American
public with the progress of religious thought in Italy.
It is rather frequent to meet students who, while suffi
ciently instructed about the various religious movements
in England, France and Germany, know nothing con
cerning the spiritual forces which have been at work in
Italy these last fifty years. It is hoped therefore that
we will fill, at least in part, a wide gap.
Finally, touching the problem of Christian Unity (in
3

Foreword
which rightly a great many among the religious leaders
all over the world have today come to see the only hope
of salvation for civil as well as religious society), we
have maintained that a previous self-reformation on the
part of the Roman Catholic Church is a conditio sine qua
non of the reunion of the Christendom. And since the
great edifice of Christian Unity can be built only on a
basis wherein order and liberty would be reconciled to
each other, we have pointed to Anglicanism as realizing,
imperfectly indeed, the principle which might eventually
bring about the equilibrium between the objective reality
of Christian truth and the subjective exigencies of
Christian souls. F, C- C.

CONTENTS PAGE
Chapter 1  9
Modern anti-papal tradition in Italy. Pietro Gian-
none. Christian character of the champions of the
"Risorgimento." Mazzini on the Papacy. D'Azeglio.
Cavour. Niccolini. Giusti. Belli. Rossetti. Fer-
retti. Garibaldi. Lambruschini. Ricasoli. Mamiani.
Rosmini and Gioberti. Gattini. De Boni. Father Gav-
azzi. Father Passaglia. Monsignor Liverani. Mon-
signor Perfetti. Settembrini. De Sanctis. Bonghi.
Ercole Ricotti, the historian of the Reformation.
Chapter II  43
Contemporary interpreters of the religious problem
in Italy and opponents of Roman Catholicism.
G. Guerzoni. Senator G. Negri. Senator P. Villari.
Prof. R. Mariano. Prof. A. Chiappelli. Prof. B.
Labanca. Hon. L. Caetani. Senator A. Mosso.
Modernism and Modernists. Christian Democrats
and their program. Don R. Murri. Senator A.
Fogazzaro and "II Santo."
Chapter III  107
Consonance of Protestantism with the German
soul. Conformity of Oriental, Greek, Roman and
Mohammedan religious systems to the natural dis
positions and manners of the peoples who elaborated
them. Difference between Latin and Greek Christianity,
determined by the unlikeness of psychological and
ethical traditions of the Latin and Greek peoples.
Protestantism : a genuine conception of the Ger
man race. Characteristics of Protestantism : psycho
logic, religious and moral structure of the German
people. The religio-moral character of the Anglo-Saxon
peoples, as revealed in their literature and Church-
life. Characteristics of the Anglican reformation.

Contents
Chapter IV  .127
Variance between Protestantism and the Latin
spirit. Complex nature of the French soul. The
interior structure of the Spanish and Italian races.
Pre-eminently artistic temperament of Italians. Latin
sentiment of beauty was one of the determining fac
tors of the exaltation of Mary the Virgin in the
Roman Catholic Church. The invocation of the
Saints answers a spiritual tendency of the Latins.
Unreligious character of Italians shown in their
civilization, literature, art, and music. Italian uncon-
cernedness with religion evidenced by the writings of
modern historians and by the lack of religious activ
ity in the nation. Causes of Italian spiritual lethargy.
Italian unreligious character witnessed by the atti
tude of modern sociologists and philosophers and
also by the present world-war.
Italians, besides being spiritually deficient, are lack
ing a strong moral character.
Chapter V. ...... . 169
Protestantism and Latin psychology. Religion for
the Latin is, above all, "sentiment." Protestant
worship cannot appeal to a Latin. The worship of
the Virgin Mary sprang from the depths of the
Latin soul. Irreconcilability of Protestantism and
the Latin soul. The Latin is either Catholic, indif
ferent, or atheistic.
Chapter VI  181
The realization of the deficiency of Protestantism
on the part of modern Italian writers. Aversion of
the Modernists to Protestantism and reason therefor.
Counter charges of Protestantism and Roman Cathol
icism. The Modernistic ideal is essentially Catholic.
Chapter VII  203
The reformation of Roman Catholicism. Help
lessness of Protestantism to reform Roman Catholi
cism. The reformation of Roman Catholicism cannot
be but by self-reform. Papal claims disproved by
6

Contents
modern scholarship. Indestructibility of the Papacy.
The lower clergy, armed with 'the weapons of bib
lical, historical and theological culture, will be the
agents of Roman reformation. Democratic issues
hanging on the world-war. History, life, and con
science are more tremendous forces than the massive
fact of the Papacy.
Chapter VIII  213
Anglicanism and its opportunity. Essential cath
olicity and comprehensiveness of Anglicanism.
Imperfections of Anglicanism are being greatly
exaggerated. It possesses a fundamental unity of
faith. In spite of its nationalism, it has not failed to
sanctify the life of the English nation. The glory
of the presence of God shines upon it.
If Anglicanism wishes to exert a reforming influ
ence on the Roman Church, it must hold fast to its
own Catholic heritage. A defense of the episcopal-
catholic principle. Anglicanism needs to awaken its
Catholic conscience. Likely effects of such an awak
ening both in England and the United States. The
effects of an Anglo-catholic awakening in its relation
to the Roman Catholic clergy and Christian unity.
Appendix. Note I (p. 233): "The Waldensian Church." Note
II (p. 234) : An excerpt from NiccoliniV tragical poem,
"Arnaldo da Brescia." Note III (p. 235): "Giusti's satiri
cal peom, "II Creatore e il Suo Mondo." Note IV (p. 236):
on "Anglican Ordinations." Note V (p. 246) : "The Attitude
of Modern Italian Thought Toward Christian Dogma."
Bibliography  263-270

CHAPTER I.
MODERN ANTI-PAPAL TRADITION IN ITALY.
Perhaps in no other country could we find an anti-
papal tradition so ancient, strong and uninterrupted as
in Italy. In fact, early during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries Arnaldo da Brescia and Cecco d'Ascoli, Dante
Alighieri and Francesco Petrarca denounced the Papacy
with such a violence as to make one hear beforehand
the protest of the reformers of the sixteenth century.
At the same time the Italian Cattari, the Patarini, the"
followers of Fra Dolcino, Gioachino da Flora, the "Frat-
icelli" or "Spiritual Franciscans" and other heretics and
mystics sought to restore the Church ideal of the prim
itive age.1
The great ascetics and saints also of that time, such
as Saint Peter Damiani, Saint Francis of Assisi, Iaco-
pone da Todi and Saint Catharine of Siena protested, in
different ways, against the corruption of the Church and
earnestly endeavored to bring it back to evangelical
virtue. Then followed Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the prophet
sent by God, who denounced with fiery passion the papal
paganism of his generation and opposed it with the ideal
of an apostolic Christianity.
Even during the triumph of the worldly and sceptical
Humanism there came out of Italy strong attacks on the
papal Church, as, for instance, that of Lorenzo Valla.
The two greatest artists of the Renaissance, Leonardo

"Appendix — Note 1, page 233: On "the Waldensians."
9

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
da Vinci and Michelangelo cherished fondly the idea of
a reform of Roman Catholicism. And so Giangiorgio
Trissino, Francesco Berni and other literati of the six
teenth century sympathized more or less strongly with
the new religious ideas.
But the real nature and meaning of this strong anti-
papal tradition, during the pre-Reformation period, is
mostly misunderstood by the Protestant historians. They
usually mistake for "Protestant" what is only "anti-
papal." In history and life Italian they see nothing but
Protestantism. To them Dante, Saint Francis and Mi
chelangelo were pure and genuine Protestants. They
unhesitatingly place Savonarola beside Luther, Jerome
of Prague, John Huss and Wycliff.
Yet, as a matter of fact, there are to be found no
traces of real Protestantsm in Italy, during the pre-
Reformation period, for the medieval Italian mystics did
not conceive a Christian Church independent of papal
authority, nor did they disavow Catholic dogmatics.
Their war was waged against the temporal power, the
abuses and corruption of the Papacy, rather than against
its spiritual power. Likewise the thinkers, literati and
artists from Dante to Michelangelo, strongly advocated
a reform of the Church "with" the pope, not "against"
the pope. They assaulted not the religious, but the polit
ical Papacy, considering it as the cause of the decay and
ruin of Italy. The only one who openly pleaded for a
religious reform "against" the pope was Marsilio da
Padova. He stands among the Italians as the great
exception. Even the attitude of Italy during the great revolution
of the sixteenth century is misrepresented by the foreign
historians. Many of them, for instance, the English
10

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Maccrie,1 fall into the serious exaggeration of represent
ing Italy as entirely won to the Protestant cause.
The truth is that the part played by Italy in the great
Protestant movement, although by no means negligible
nor lacking in interest, was exceedingly limited. The
number of those who followed the impulse received from
the German Lutheran revolution and associated them
selves with it was very small. Bernardo Ochino, Pietro
Martire, Aonio Paleario, Fausto Soccini, Pietro Carn-
esecchi, Pietro Paolo Vergerio were mostly captains with
out armies.
Others, as the good Cardinal Sadoleto, probably the
Cardinals Contarini and Seripando, and in general those
fifty or sixty illustrous persons who, under Clement VII,
gathered in Rome and formed the "Oratory of divine
love," where pious souls who, though longing for a re
form of ecclesiastical discipline and not opposed to a
certain understanding with the reformers, yet kept them
selves entirely within the pale of the Catholic Church
and intended, by all means, to save its orders and doc
trines. There were, besides, a great many others who en
dorsed the doctrine of justification by faith, as main
tained by the Protestants, yet without proclaiming the
rebellion against the pope and much less touching deli
cate dogmatic matters. Among them were Cardinal
Morone, Madame Giulia Gonzaga, Madame Vittoria
Colonna, Marco Antonio Flaminio, probably Giovanni
Valdes and the anonymous author of the valued booklet,
"The Benefice of the Death of Jesus Christ."
The Italian reformer of the sixteenth century, as a
whole, accepted only certain Lutheran doctrines with
"'History of the Reformation in Italy."
11

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
certain reservations, without thinking of a defection from
the Roman Church. Although strongly attracted by cer
tain features of the Protestant ideal, yet they did not,
nor could they remove themselves from the powerful
influence of such facts as the organic unity of the Church,
the traditional veneration of Italians and all Latin peo
ples for the Papacy as being the supreme custodian of
the keys, the beneficial influence of the Roman See on
law, art, and civilization, and the undeniable greatness of
some of the popes.
Thus it is safe to say that Protestantism failed, during
the sixteenth century, to win the Italian soul. There
were in Italy individual, partial endeavors on the part
of some cultured and meditative minds ; but the common
conscience of the people did not catch fire. The history
of the few real Italian Protestants is a sad, heart-rending
story of disappointments, desertions, isolations and tragic
ends. Even in France itself, Protestantism, in spite of its
fierce struggles, failed to achieve victory. The fact that
Henry IV, in the year 1594, had to become a Catholic,
in order to enter Paris, tells us clearly that the majority
of the French were untouched by Calvinism.
It is out of our purpose to deal with the causes of the
Protestant failure in the Latin world. Doubtless the
Italian moral and social ambient of the sixteenth cen
tury, characterized by the deep scepticism and paganism
of the Renaissance, made Italy a ground ill suited for
the seeds of the Reformation. The foreign origin of
Protestantism also and the exaggerations by which its
dogmatic theology was marked concurred to hinder its
acceptance by the Italians. Beside the ethnic influences,
the nationalistic sentiment and material interests played
12

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
an interesting part in the defeat of Protestantism. Fin
ally the merciless Inquisition did its work thoroughly.
It is also beyond doubt that in France the political
question embarrassed the religious movement, and that
the objective defects of Calvinism impeded its progress.
Yet the most profound causes which prevented Prot
estantism from reaching the Latin peoples are to be
found not in their political and social conditions, but
rather in their psychological, ethical and esthetic tenden
cies. In a subsequent chapter we will endeavor to show
that this psychological element, more than anything else,
is what prevents, even today, the Latin peoples from
approaching Protestantism.
Laying aside the Reformation period, let us consider
Protestantism in its relation to the history and life of the
Latin peoples (more particularly the Italian) during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The modern anti-papal tradition in Italy may be said
to date from Pietro Giannone (1676-1748), the illustri
ous historian and jurist of Apulia, regarded as the coup
ling link between Bruno and Mazzini. Professor Bald-
assarre Labanca, of the University of Rome, considers
Giannone as the greatest adversary of the temporal
power and the political influence of the Papacy, beside
Dante and Macchiavelli.1 Indeed no criticism of the
papal system was ever sharper than that which Giannone
made in his monumental "Storia civile del Regno di
Napoli" and in his most original "II triregno." On ac
count of his ideas he was excommunicated by the Church
and repeatedly condemned to exile, imprisonment, and
torture. His convictions, however, were stronger than
the bodily punishments to which ecclesiastical authori-
""II Papato"— Roma-Fratelli Bocca, 1905.
13

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ties submitted him. It is to be remarked that Giannone
did not concern himself directly with the doctrines and
practices of the papal Catholicism. He arose to protest
against the political Papacy, which he considered as a
poisonous spring, corrupting and infecting not only Italy
but the whole social world.
******* The anti-papal tradition inherited from Bruno and
Giannone, grew stronger and wider in Italy during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The great char
acters of the Italian "Risorgimento," such as Mazzini,
Cavour, Garibaldi, D'Azeglio, Niccolini, Guerrazzi,
Giusti, Ricasoli, Lambruschini, Rosmini, Gioberti, Bertini,
Minghetti, Bianchi Giovini, Aristide Gabelli and others,
aspired to a purification of religion and of the Church, in
asmuch as these were opposed to their political and so
cial ideal. They opposed to the temporal supremacy of
the Church the principle of her separation from the state,
strongly advocated religious freedom, and worked very
hard at the education and moral ejevation of people, who
remained in ignorance, superstition, and fanaticism.
It is true that not all of those Italian liberals were
Christians in the orthodox sense of the word. Yet there
is no doubt that a great many of them drew their highest
ideals from the Bible and showed the power of Christ
in their lives. The Jesuits and Ultramontanes usually
point to the Italian patriots of the nineteenth century
as being infidel and anti-Christian men. On the con
trary, we know that they were mostly believers and also
good Christians, who realized that there were doctrines,
precepts and practices in the Church of the pope not in
spired by, but on the contrary, contradicting the solemn
maxims of the Christian faith. Consequently they wished
14

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
a reformation of Roman Catholicism, though some of
them thought of a philosophico-liberal rather than strict
ly evangelical reformation. Even the most moderate
among them, the so-called "New-Guelf realized the ab
solute necessity of raising the Italian people from the
forms to the spirit of Catholicism, a thing about which
the popes and the cardinals were quite careless. To have
an idea of what these makers of the national sentiment
in Italy thought about the Papacy, it is enough to look
at the assault made upon it by Mazzini, the most thought
ful of all modern Italians. That austere statesman, in
1834 wrote to Lamennais in these solemn terms :
The condemnation of the Papacy does not come
from us, but from God. The Papacy must per
ish, because it has falsified its own mission. It
has killed faith through a materialism far more
abject and fatal than that of the eighteenth cen
tury. The Papacy has pretended to crush the
liberty of the world; but it will itself be crushed
by men. Yes, the Papacy is destined to perish,
for it has hindered the mission with which God
entrusted humanity. The time will come when
humanity shall raise itself upon its ruin.
Still stronger is the charge which Mazzini urges against
the Papacy in the first volume of his "Philosophical
Studies :" The Papacy, he says, is extinguished, irrevo
cably extinguished, through the fault of the popes
themselves. All mankind has proclaimed itself
emancipated from it, and no one shall ever call it
back to its former slavery. Humanity has told the
popes: "You have become degenerate, you have
disowned the teachings of the Gospel; you have
15

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
destroyed that pact which alone formed your early
power; herein is your condemnation. What have
you done of that holy word 'Love each other as
brothers,' the very word which contained the fu
ture of the world? What of that promise of
emancipation to the people, which only insured
the triumph of Christianity over the pagan mate
rialism ? What of that spirit of charity, of mercy,
and pardon which breathed in the words and
deeds of the early believers? You have forgot
ten your origin, deviated from the moral rules
laid upon you, sacrificed the purpose of Christian
ity to the thirst of power, the avidity of riches,
and an universal empire. The Gospel suggested
to you love and universal brotherhood; but you
have sown discord, inspired hatred, kindled wars
between the sons of the same fatherland ; you have
committed fornication with the civil tyranny of all
countries, changed the cross, symbol of sacrifice
and salvation, into a sign of dominion and ruin.
The Gospel spoke of the equality of men before
God: but you have consecrated the inequality, by
raising around yourselves a religious aristocracy
and establishing a hierarchy absurd, hostile, and
tyrannical to believers. The Gospel opened a road
to the perfection of the individual: but you have
closed it; you have condemned or prostituted in
telligence, enchained the spirit, arrested progress
by a canon of immobility in contradiction to the
laws of the universe ; you have corrupted or pro
hibited popular education, pronounced books dan
gerous, persecuted the minds, made genius sterile,
given to the flames Arnaldo, Cecco d'Ascoli, Sav-
16

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
onarola, Bruno, and left Galileo to the condem
nation of the friars.
"The Gospel prescribed to you humility, pov
erty, purity of morals; but you grow haughty in
wealth and pomp; you have for seventy years in
Avignon set an example of corruption to which
history can oppose no equal ; you have made your
court a house of prostitution, of licentiousness
and incest; you have carried scandal in triumph,
given countries as feuds to your children. For
about half a century you exhibited to the world the
spectacle of three heads to the Church, fighting
each other by insult, plot, and excommunication.
"You should have purified man, raised and spir
itualized him more and more ; but you have made
of worship a materialism, of moral conception a
sensuality, of religion a superstition. You should
have welcomed and taken people out of misery;
on the contrary you have exhausted them and
taken away from them their very flesh and blood,
through exactions, and the traffic of indulgences.
You should have used tolerance ; on the contrary
you have made human blood run in rivers, created
the Inquisition, raised gibbets and stakes, ap
plauded the Eve of St. Bartholomew. You have
disowned liberty, the first-born creature of God.
You have prayed for and with the Turk against
the Greek cross, cursed the Poles, and called the
Teuton into Italy. Therefore (humanity says to
the popes) I reject your name, your symbol, your
authority. Your mission, o popes, is over; make
way for the people who advance to take your
place." 17

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Mazzini (1805-1872), the fearless patriot and repub
lican agitator, gave to Italy a faith and a conscience.
The mystical and idealistic spirit that was in him, rather
than the practical man he was, proclaimed the union
of political and religious principles. Mazzini's creed,
"God and the people," besides testifying to his strong
and sincere religious faith, shows that he based the
national cause on the groundwork of religion. In his
exalted vision Rome, having been purged of the papal
contamination and become truly "Catholic," would initi
ate the third stage in the life of Europe and inaugurate
"moral unity and fraternity in a faith common to all
humanity." Mazzini is taxed with having often been mistaken
in his judgment of men, the means and time of action;
yet, in spite of all, he was truly the "titanic dream," as
he himself says of Dante, "of an Italy, the angel of
light among the nations." He is to be recognized as the
prophet and teacher of the democratic principle in Italy :
a man, belonging to the noble band of those who, like
Rousseau, Lamennais and Lincoln believed in the power
that is within men rather than in that which is exer
cised over them. When one thinks of his dauntless faith
in God and man, of his ideals of justice, liberty and
fraternization, of all he suffered for his faith, he will
agree with George Herron that Mazzini is "more nearly
akin to Christ than any other modern historical char
acter." Mazzini headed the Roman Republic of 1848, con
cerning which the "Monitore Romano" expressed the
sentiment of Italian people in the following passage:
"The Republic arose in Rome by universal suffrage ; rose
on the ruins of the throne of the popes, which the cry
18

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
of all Europe, the curses of all civilized nations and
the spirit of the Gospel had crumbled into dust. Today,
when on that throne, marked with infamy by civilization,
flows the blood of innumerable victims, who will ever
dare to raise it again?"
******* The hatred of Mazzini for the Papacy was shared
by Massimo D'Azeglio (1798-1866), a statesman and
romance writer, who took a leading part in the political
developments of Italy during the first half of the nine
teenth century. His policy was to counter the repub
lican propaganda of the Mazzinist group and advocate
the monarchical cause of Charles Albert of Piedmont.
In 1846 he published his famous "Degli ultimi casi di
Romagna" in which he bitterly attacked the Papacy
as a. secular state, and strenuously urged upon the
Italian princes the necessity of combining in a national
policy. After the election of Pope Pius IX he went to
Rome: and to his influence are to a certain extent due
the reforms which marked the early government of
Pius IX. In 1850 he introduced into the kingdom of
Piedmont and Sardinia the so-called "Siccardi Laws,"
which abolished the "ecclesiasticum forum" and adopted
other strong measures obnoxious to the Church. In vir
tue of the Siccardi Laws the State subordinated com
pletely the Church to its interests.
******* Not less important was the part played in the strug
gle against Rome by Camillo Cavour (1810-1861), the
great statesman whose genius brought about the political
consolidation of Italy, amidst strong internal commotions
and foreign complications. Cavour realized that an
tagonism between religion and civil liberty was fatal
19

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
to the progress of the country and strongly pleaded for
the harmonization of those two great forces, by clearly
defining their respective fields of action. The ideal re
lations between the ecclesiastical and civil society he ex
pressed in his famous formula, "Libera Chiesa in Libero
Stato" ("a free Church in a free State").
After having, through his support of the Siccardi
Laws, vindicated the sovereignty of the State in civil
affairs, Cavour turned his mind to the Church's estate,
which was quite excessive and disproportionate to its
needs and obligations. His suggestion of a reform of
the Church's income having been met with a resolute
refusal on the part of Rome, Cavour, supported by the
Chamber and the public opinion, suppressed the religious
foundations, except the bishoprics and such corpora
tions as were devoted to preaching and educative and
charitable work (1855).
Cavour was a moderate liberal; he repeatedly opposed
the excessive pretensions of the radicals who aimed at
doing to the Church all the harm they could : and prob
ably he would never have concerned himself with the
affairs of the Church but for the encroachments of the
papal power over civil matters and the manifold abuses
springing from its immense wealth.
Convinced as he was that not only the interests of
Italy but those of the Church as well required that the
Papacy should be friendly to the monarchy and walk
in harmony with it, he tried very hard to persuade the
Papacy to surrender the temporal power and thus age-
volate the completion of Italian unity. In return he was
ready to make ample concessions to the Church. But
the Papacy, obstinately persisting in its theocratic ideal,
refused to come to an understanding. 20

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
The last words of Cavour : "Italy is made, all is safe,"
characterize his whole great and noble life.
******* Among those who exposed with great violence the de
generacy of Rome should be mentioned Gian Battista
Niccolini (1782-1861), one of the most illustrious writ
ers of Italy. In the modem Italian literature there are
no charges against Rome stronger than those which
Niccolini makes in his great tragical poem "Arnaldo da
Brescia." To him Rome is a prostitute, a monster de
filed with the blood of the saints, a woman who forni
cated with all the kings of the earth, and has lost in
the mire the white robes of purity and sanctity.1
In writing of the change of Pope Pius IX who first
gave his blessing to the struggling Italy and then revoked
it, Niccolini exclaimed: "Oh stupid folly to rely on a
pope for freedom and independence! . . ."
When Pius IX, during the uprising of Rome (1848),
escaped in the disguise of a priest and fled to Gaeta, in
the Neapolitan territory, Niccolini remarked:
He ran away, hoping that Rome would fall into
anarchy and so excite the indignation of Europe,
speculating, in so doing, on the calamities to which
he exposed his people. And this man you call
God on earth, the vicegerent of Christ! . . .
Away, away with you, impious blasphemer. He
ran away and threw himself into the arms of
Ferdinand of Naples, an assassin stained with the
blood of his own subjects.
Niccolini continues in the same tone:
Believe me, if you want to introduce reformation
"Appendix — Page 234: "Excerpt from Niccolini's "Arnaldo da
Brescia." 21

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
into Italy you ought first to persuade Italians that
the religion of the Gospel has nothing to do with
the religion of the priests. The priests have turned
the warm-hearted Italians almost into a nation of
atheists. What wonder. . . . Can you not
conceive it? Have they not made religion the
cause of all our miseries ? Do we not owe to the
ambition of the popes the decay of our glory and
the loss of our independence? Have they not
corrupted and turned to their own account the
most sacred teachings of the Gospel? The sign
of our redemption, has it not been changed into
the ax of the executioner? And are you surprised
that the ardent and superficially informed youth
of Italy, identifying the religion of Christ with
that of the pope, should become atheists? Let us
then sweep away the priests and their corrupted
religion; let us throw down the last fragment of
the old house and then we shall be able to build a
new one.
Commenting on the recall, by Pius IX, of the troops
which he had been compelled to send for the deliver
ance of Italy, Niccolini says:
Perhaps God, in his infinite wisdom, prevented
Italy from being liberated at the hands of the
pope, in order that the Papacy, that abhorred in
stitution, might ultimately be swept from the face
of the earth without leaving behind it a single
regret.
******* While Niccolini is so fiery and wrathful against Rome,
Giuseppe Giusti (1809-1850), the Tuscan poet, employs
all the resources of his satirical vein to ridicule Roman
22

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Catholicism. None among the writers of the nineteenth
century used more successfully laughter as a means to
bring scorn and contempt upon the Church of the pope.
In his admirable satire "II Creatore e il Suo Mondo"1
he represents God and Saint Peter looking down on
Rome. Peter, greatly surprised, asks God who is that
man whom he beholds in the Vatican amidst such great
luxury and pomp. To whom God, in an ironical tone,
replies : "O Peter, Peter, that is your great successor."
Then Peter asks: "Where is that primitive simplicity,
where that poverty which I experienced? how changed
everything is !" Finally, after having conversed on
the papal launching of anathemas, selling of indul
gences, greed and various other abuses, God remarks:
"What is still worse, all this is done in my name, whereas
I do not know anything about it."
A spirit in many respects kindred to that of Giusti
was possessed by Gioacchino Belli (1791-1863), the
Roman vernacular poet. His "Political Sonnets" are
full of the most mordant satire on the abuses of the papal
government under Gregory XVI.
In one of his sonnets he represents a pope blessing,
at Easter, the people from the balcony of St. Peter's.
As he looked down upon the countless faithful throng
ing the vast square, he turned to a cardinal, by his side,
and said : "How do all these people live ?" "The one
humbugs the other," the cardinal answered. "And we
humbug them all" (E noi li bugiamo tutti), said the
Pope, raising his hands to bless them : "In the name of
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost."
*******

"Appendix — page 235, Note III : Giusti's poem, "II Creatore e il
Suo Mondo.'; 23

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Also Gabriele Rossetti (1783-1854) was one of those
who combined in their heart the love for Italian political
independence and the hatred for the spiritual tyranny
under which Italians were groaning. Very few poets are
so greatly inspired as he is in his patriotic and evan
gelical songs. Italy owes to him a great part of her
Christian hymnology. He was exiled because of his
political views and died in London. Says of him Pro
fessor Giovanni Luzzi:
Rossetti obtained his ideal from the Gospel.
The great poet, driven from his country for po
litical reasons, through God's providence found
Christ and the Gospel in the land of his exile.
For twenty years he gave most careful attention
to spiritual problems. The Bible became his
favorite book. Through the letter of the New
Testament he found the living person of Christ;
and Christ became his supporter in time of dis
tress, his light in the time of his blindness, his
comfort in the supreme crisis of his last hour.1
An intimate friend of Rossetti, in his exile, was Sal-
vatore Ferretti (1817-1874), who made in London an
active propaganda on behalf of the Italian Evangelical
Mission, in the same city, and edited the greatest part
of its literary productions. He was the soul of the stren
uous monthly "Eco di Savonarola," which was published
from the year 1847 to 1860, and wrote also several hymns,
which are among the most beautiful of Italian Evangel
ical Hymnology.
******* Going on we find Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882),

""The Struggle for Christian Truth in Italy," 1913, Fleming H.
Revell Co. 24

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
the great soldier and patriot, who became the paladin of
Italy's crusade for freedom and the idol of Italians, hated
the Papacy with all his heart and did not hesitate to add
his strong note of denunciation to the great Italian choir.
Thus he speaks :
The Papacy, aided by the Jesuits, is the most
horrible plague with which my country is afflicted.
Eighteen centuries of falsehood, persecution and
burning at the stake, in complicity with all the
tyrants of Italy, have rendered the plague incur
able. At present the vampire of the land of the
Scipios supports its body, which is corrupted and
eaten up by gangrene.
The great patriot was often heard speaking of the
Papacy as being "the cancer of Italy."
Garibaldi hated the priests from the bottom of his
heart, for he considered them as the chief obstacle to
Italy's happiness. Speaking of his dear island home,
Caprera, he said: "One of the special blessings of this
place is the absence of priests . . . and if this Italy
does not occupy the place it ought, it is on account of
that black race of priests, a worse plague than the chol
era morbus."1
The supreme aim of Garibaldi's political and military
activity was to overthrow the temporal power of the
popes and unite Rome with Italy. In 1857 he adhered
to the "National Society" launched by Cavour and the
Sicilian historian, Giuseppe La Farina; the slogan of
which was "Independence and Unity," with the corol
lary, "Out with Austrians and the Pope."
"Yet Garibaldi found some priests with their hearts open to the
great ideals of life. He considered Ugo Bassi one of his dearest
friends and called him his "white dove."
25

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
In 1862, while in Marsala, Garibaldi led the people to
the cathedral to swear, upon the altar, the memorable
"Rome or Death !"
In 1867, when Bettino Ricasoli, eager to come to a
"modus vivendi" with the Vatican, presented a scheme
which meant an abandonment of the State's control over
the Church and a concession of ample liberties to the
same, Garibaldi was foremost among those who strongly
charged him with a compromise with "the fatal sect of
priests" and compelled him to resign.
In the same year, in spite of France's protecting the
papal states, the daring captain strongly protested his
resolution to go to Rome "in spite of priests and Bona
parte." Garibaldi's great dream was realized three years later,
when an Italian army, under the leadership of General
Cadorna, broke through "Porta Pia" and overthrew for
ever the temporal power, that very power which the
popes had so wickedly abused throughout the centuries.
Garibaldi is usually presented by the Jesuits and the
apologists of papalism as an unreligious man. But, as
matter of fact, he was a sincere Christian who often de
clared that he "preferred the religion of Christ, not the
religion of the pope and the cardinals, the enemies of
Italy."******* Among the Italian teachers and writers of the nine
teenth century a prominent place was held by Raffaele
Lambruschini (1788-1873). He was a Roman Catholic
priest, with a deep intellectual as well as spiritual educa
tion, and of very liberal views. His extraordinary po
litical, literary and educational activity (which produced
such great pedagogical monuments as "Libri della educa-
26

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
zione" and "Dialoghi sulla istruzione") did not prevent
him from thinking seriously of religion and realizing the
urgent need of a reform of Roman Catholicism. We are
indebted to Senator Marco Tabarrini for the publication
of "Pensieri di un Solitario" (Thoughts of a Solitary),
Lambruschini's posthumous work, in which he gave ex
pression to his ideas about religion and papal Catholi
cism. He describes the Church of his days thus:
The Church is no longer loved as a mother;
she is hated as a cruel stepmother; and it is cer
tain that on account of her errors, her ignorance
and her passions she shall fall as the Synagogue
fell.
Elsewhere he adds:
We cannot go on this way. We must break the
chains, cast off the yoke of a bondage harder than
that of the Jews. We must go back to the liberty
wherewith Christ has made us free. We must lay
hold of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Galatians
and rebuild our religious life on it.
3ft JfC »(• 3JE 5|C 3jC S|C
Closely associated with the name of Lambruschini is
that of the Baron Bettino Ricasoli (1809-1880), a Flor
entine statesman and a prominent advocate of Italian
unity. In the year 1847 Ricasoli, together with Lam
bruschini, addressed a "memorial" to the Government
of Tuscany, in which he remarked :
The genuine sentiment of religion today is in
stilled no longer ; rites and feasts have been multi
plied for pecuniary interests, the veneration of
faith and the practice of evangelical virtues are
27

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
quite neglected. The sincerity of religion has
been replaced by hypocrisy and indifference.
Then, after having asked himself if the Roman hier
archy would ever remedy the evil, he emphatically
answered no.
No, he said, because the cardinals are incor
rigible ; and the government of the priests is among
all governments tbe one which less profits by
experience.
Not less explicitly Ricasoli expressed his mind with
regard to the temporal power of the popes.
The temporal power is a denial of liberty, a
principle which is one of the greatest foundations
laid by divine wisdom as the condition of the
development of human forces.
The great politician was still more violent in denoun
cing the religious tyranny of the papal Church. When,
in 1851, Count Pietro Guicciardini was arrested for hav
ing been found reading the Bible, Ricasoli wrote indig
nantly : To trample upon the most sacred of the prin
ciples, that of liberty, granted to the religious
conscience of man is the most brutal and anti-
Christian act that a government might commit.1
***** * *
Not less advanced were the religious ideas of Count
Terenzio Mamiani (1799-1885), the illustrious philo
sophical writer. Although he had been educated in Rome
by the Jesuits, yet he was afterwards proscribed for hav
ing participated in the liberal movement of 1831. The
keynote of Mamiani's religious, political and social works

"Ricasoli : "Letters and Papers," Florence, 1886-1889.
28

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
was the harmonization of religion with political freedom
and modern progress. He foretold the fall of the tem
poral power of the popes.1
******* It was positively pathetic to see the pope, Pius IX,
under the Jesuitic solicitations, condemning Antonio Ros-
mini and Vincenzo Gioberti, Italian philosophers
who loved the Church equally with the fatherland.
They belonged to the school of liberal Catholicism of
Dollinger, Giinther, Hermes, Mochler, Hirscher, Fros-
chammer, Balytzer, Lamennais, Gerbert, Lacordaire,
Montalembert, Tommaseo, Audisio, Curci and other il
lustrious Italian and foreign writers who, because of
their lack of sympathy for Ultramontanism were con
demned by the Church or even compelled to separate
from her. Both Gioberti and Rosmini desired a reform
"with" the pope, in order to bring about a reconciliation
of Catholicism with the modern civilization and science.
Gioberti (1801-1852) rightly held as the oracle of the
Neo-Guelfs, had always acted as a loyal Catholic, and
even in his philosophical and political writings had never
failed in devotion toward the Papacy. In the year 1843,
during his exile in Belgium, he issued his Del Primato
Morale degli Italiani, an exposition of the Papacy as the
divinely appointed agency for the regeneration of Italy.
Gioberti held that the unity and independence which
Italy demanded were attainable through a confederation
of the Italian States under the pope's presidency. In
his "La Riforma Cattolica" he wrote: "Hitherto people

1 Among the philosophicb-religious works of Mamiani excel:
"La Rinascenza Cattolica," 1862; "Teorica della Religione e dello
Stato," 1868; "La Religione dell'avvenire," 1879; "Critica della
Rivelazione," 1880; "Del Papato negli Ultimi Secoli," 1885.
29

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
have wished to reform Rome without Rome, nay, in
spite of Rome ; now they ought to reform Rome through
Rome." The books which, besides "La Riforma Cat
tolica" compromised Gioberti most were "Filosofia della
Rivelazione" and "II Gesuita Moderno," the latter being
a strong denunciation of the unsympathetic policy by
which the Jesuitic Order is ruled. Indeed the outlook
of Gioberti was too conservative and out of harmony
with the age of Mazzini.
As to the pious Rosmini (1797-1855) he was never
left in peace under Pius IX, for the reasons that his
sincere spirit of Christianity had compelled him to bare
the wounds infecting the body of the papal Catholicism.
The Curialists hated the illustrious thinker to such an
extent that the Secretary of State, Antonelli, declared
him a Jansenist and a plague in the Church. The hatred
of the zealous Jesuits for him did not cease even with
his death. For, by means of scholastic subtilties they
discovered in his writings forty heretical propositions,
which were accordingly condemned by Pope Leo XIII.
Such condemnation is, in the life of Leo XIII, a page
akin to that of the denial of Anglican Orders.
******* Among the strongest denunciations of the Papacy ever
heard in Italy was the speech by the illustrious member
of Parliament, Gattini, delivered in the fateful 1870.
He remarked: Civilization asks what share the Papacy has
taken in its work. Is it the press? is it electric
ity ? is it steam ? is it chemical analysis ? is it free
trade? is it self-government? is it the principle
of nationality ? is it the proclamation of the rights
of man ? of the liberty of conscience ? Of all this
30

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
the Papacy is the very negation. Its culminating
points are Gregory I who, like Omar, burnt li
braries ; Gregory VII, who destroyed a moiety of
Rome and created the temporal power; Innocent
III, who founded the Inquisition; Boniface IX,
who destroyed the last remains of municipal lib
erty in Rome; Pius VII, who did the same in
Bologna; Alexander VI, who established the cen
sorship of the books ; Paul III, who published the
Bull for the establishment of the Jesuits; Pius
V, who covered Europe with burning funeral
pyres; Urban VIII, who tortured Galileo, and
Pius IX, who has given us the modern Syllabus.
Another among the bitterest opponents of the Roman
Church, during the second half of the last century was
De Boni, who, led by the consideration of the corruption
and abuses of the Church, attacked religion itself. In
his eloquent "La Chiesa Romana e lTtalia (Milano,
1863), he declared that "the Roman Church has brought
miseries on Italy enough to make the stones cry out."
In the same book, speaking of the spiritual chain fet
tering the soul of Italy, he uttered the famous expres
sion: "Our soul is still prisoner in the Vatican."
In his work, "LTnquisizione," he warned liberal Ital
ians thus: We must adapt our armies to the character and
strength of the enemy. The Church has confis
cated Italy in the name of God, chaining our coun
try to her own altars; and we shall not be able
to break either the chains of the country or our
own without overturning those altars, which are
based on the cupidity of a caste and the ignorance
of the people. The Church of Rome is an im-
31

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
moral rebellion, pitching her tent in Italy in the
name of God; and it is impossible to escape the
dilemma : Italy or the Church must perish.
******* Rosmini and Lambruschini were not the only ecclesi
astics who advocated a Catholicism more liberal and in
harmony with the political needs of Italy. There were
other clergymen who championed the independence and
unity of Italy and preached, at the same time, a return
to the pure precepts of the Gospel. Among such, for
instance, was Father Alessandro Gavazzi (1809-1889),
the heroic Barnabite monk, who welcomed so warmly
the liberal movement of 1848. He followed Garibaldi
in his campaigns of Sicily, Tyrol and Mentana, minister
ing with apostolic zeal to the religious needs of the sol
diers. When the papal troops which had been ordered to
help the Italian cause were called back by Pius IX,
Father Gavazzi, instead of returning with them, broke
with the pope and set himself to preach a crusade against
him. Later on he visited England, Scotland, the United
States and Canada, lecturing against the papal Church.
His fearless proclamation of the truth drew upon him
the hate of the Jesuits; he was persecuted, imprisoned,
mistreated ; yet he continued to preach and to argue thus :
Macchiavelli said: We Italians are indebted
to the Roman Church and the priests for having
become unreligious and wicked. What is to be
done? To become good and religious. And how
is that to be attained ? Either it is true that with
the Papacy we have succeeded in losing religion
or not. If not, then all our greatest men, Dante,
Petrarca, Savonarola, Macchiavelli and Guicci-
32

Protestantism and the Latift*^r*m&
ardini were mistaken and we ourselves are mis
taken and misled by the positive facts which we
see about us, provided we do not wish to mistake
bigotry, hypocrisy and superstition for religion.
If then it is true, we ought to be consistent with
ourselves and remove the cause of irreligion.
Italians! It is necessary to become again Chris
tians in Italy ; but the Papacy alone was that which
made us unchristian; therefore the Papacy must
be swept out from Italy in order that Christianity
may reappear there.1
In 1870 Father Gavazzi laid the foundations of the
"Free Church in Italy," which, in 1891, by a royal de
cree, was given the title "Italian Evangelical Church."
Florence is the headquarters of this sect, which, in 1901,
numbered about thirty congregations, fifteen ministers
and 2000 communicants.2
The cause of a united Italy was advocated also by
Father Carlo Passaglia (1812-1887), a Jesuit theologian
who, in brilliant pamphlets, and especially in his "Pro
Causa Italica ad Episcopos Italianos" boldly attacked the
temporal power of the popes, declaring it unnecessary,
and insisted on the need of a reform of the Church,
through a return to the primitive discipline.
Among the most advanced of the ecclesiastical re
formers during the last century, one should not fail to
mention Liverani and Perfetti, both of whom were mem
bers of the Curia. Monsignor Francesco Liverani, a

ill Papato e l'ltalia.'' Conferenze Firenze, 1861.
2Among the writings of Father Gavazzi the following are re
markable : "Recollections of the Last Four Popes," London,
1859; "II Papato e l'ltalia," 1861 ; "No Union With Rome," 1871 ;
"La Favola del Viaggio di S. Pietro a Roma," 1869.
33

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
man highly esteemed in the Vatican, supported Passa-
glia in his war against the temporal power and de
nounced the papal court. After the publication of his
sensational book, "II Papato, lTmpero e il Regno dTtalia"
he was deprived of his dignities and obliged to retire
into private life.
Monsignor Perfetti, formerly secretary of Cardinal
Marini, declared: Papal Rome is a more abnormal fact, and, by
consequence, a more impious fact than Islam.
. . . The Rome of the pope will fall today or
tomorrow : the sooner the better. . . . The
people have not been able to see what a jewel the
Gospel is, because it was set in a metal too base,
the same indeed as that of which their chains were
made.1
******* Even in Southern Italy, where provinces were most
oppressed by the despotic and corrupt ecclesiasticism,
there rose a noble legion of thinkers, writers and patriots,
as De Sanctis, Spaventa, Settembrini, Comforti, Amari,
De Meis, Amabile, who continued the tradition of liberal
ism inherited from Bruno, Telesio and Campanella ; while
Savarese, Pisanelli, Mancini and others continued the
juridical school of Giannone, upholding the rights of the
Lay-State. The religious sentiments of all these writers and pa
triots are reflected by those of Luigi Settembrini (1813-
1876), the bold author of "Protesta dei Popoli delle
Due Sicilie," published in 1847. In the year 1864 he

"Delle Nuove Condizioni del Papato," Firenze, 1862.
34

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
wrote to Stanislao Bianciardi (the Tuscan editor of the
anti-papal "L'Esaminatore") thus:
National conscience is the goal to be kept in
view : error must be extirpated from it and truth
implanted in it. Rome, the great enemy, the first
cause of all the evils of Italy, does not lie on the
Tiber, she lies here, in our consciences, and here
we must fight her. . . . How I wish that all
our papers would understand that there is a more
serious question than the political one with which
to cope, namely the religious question, which
ought never to be lost sight of.
Pasquale Villari says of Settembrini :
His old hatred of priests and the Papacy had
become his ruling passion and it seemed to rise
to the boiling point when he saw some of his
dearest friends stooping to compromise for politi
cal ends and almost playing the part of neo-
guelphs.2
Also Francesco De Sanctis, the most original critic that
Italy has ever produced, was one of the truest awakeners
and deliverers of the national spirit, a vigorous apostle
of free thought and political liberty. It is famous — his
assault on the Jesuit Father Bresciani, the author of
"The Jew of Verona," a romance written for the pur
pose of slandering the Italian revolutionary movement.
How is it (he said to the Jesuit) that the same
religion we all find so admirable in Manzoni's
work only makes us yawn when you speak of it?
''Quoted from Luzzi's "The Struggle for Christian Truth in
Italy," Revell, 1913.
2"Studies Historical and Critical," translated by Linda Villari,
1907, Scribner. 35

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Because in your book it is not seen to be a genuine
sentiment and a living faith, but to be solely in
spired by party spirit.
A great enemy of the papal Catholicism was also Rug-
giero Bonghi (1826-1886) an illustrious scholar and
politician, author of several books, among which the
famous "Vita di Gesu Cristo" (1890: Roma); "Leone
XIII e l'ltalia": 1878; "Arnaldo da Brescia"; 1884,
etc. Bonghi expressed repeatedly his admiration for the
Protestant peoples of North Europe, ascribing their vigor
ous religious life to their love of the Bible. On the con
trary he strongly disliked and opposed Roman Catholi
cism. While Minister of Public Instruction he set to
reform the Italian educational system, subtracting it en
tirely from clerical influence, and prevented the estab
lishment of a Catholic University in Rome.
"Clericalism, (Bonghi said) is the negation of God,
the abasement of all the ideals which the human con
science has conceived in God. It is the clerical, it is
this wicked one whom we must fight and hunt out from
the civil society."1
Curiously enough, the man who spoke thus was, at one
time, considered as the only clerical member in the Italian
Parliament. Evidently his clericalism was not dis
associated from intelligence and the love of truth.
When Bonghi was accused of having, at a banquet given
in honor of Zola in Rome, used words offensive to the
Virgin Mary, he replied: "I offend the Madonna,
the dearest, sweetest, purest, holiest idea of womanhood
that the human mind has ever conceived. . . . No.

"Lemmi, in his circular letter of October 20, 1890, echoed Bonghi.
After having denounced the Papacy as the "cancer of Italy," he
added : "Clericalism is the only party for which hatred is holy."
36

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
But those offend her who make merchandise of her, who
pretend to spread her worship while they are only seeking
selfish gains, and who even do not fear to clothe in a
pagan garment the dearest Christian image. Oh, how
happy that day would be to me in which the Catholic
nations would throw off those beliefs that degrade them
in the eyes of Protestants, and in which the priests
would cease to darken the minds of the people with
ludicrous superstitions."
******* It is interesting to find that Signor Francesco Crispi
also considered Roman Catholicism spiritually deficient.
Once, in the Parliament, he made a strong attack upon
the Church of Rome and uttered those fateful words:
"The day is coming when Christianity will kill Roman
Catholicism." Thus the great statesman made it plain
that he distinguished between Roman Catholicism and
Christianity. As all the prominent statesmen of Italy
Crispi fully realized the political character of Roman
Catholicism, which, ever since the year 1870 has been
conspiring against the national unity of Italy. "To be
a sincere Catholic," he wrote in the "Nuova Rivista" for
May, 1892, "and a friend of Italy is, to the Italians, a
contradiction." Speaking of the deleterious effects of
the political activity of Roman Catholicism upon the
national life as well as the Church herself, Crispi pointed
to the possibility of an Italian National Church. "The
Church of Rome," he said, "will cease to be universal if
she continues to confound religion with politics. The
people, disturbed in their consciences, will feel their need
of a National Church, in whose bosom Patriotism and
God can agree.'" 37

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Crispi', even as most Italian patriots, is presented by
the Jesuits as an irreligious man. But he was not such.
On his death-bed, speaking of himself and his friend,
Signor Paratore, he remarked to his daughter, the Prin
cess of Linguaglossa : "We are not opposed to religion.
We are anti-Catholic, anti-clerical. Our religion is He"
(pointing to a Crucifix, hanging by his bed-side).
5|S !|S !(E !)C S|S «p *F
Another great name in the annals of the Italian oppo
sition to Roman Catholicism is Signor Giuseppe Zanar-
delli, premier of Italy. In one of his addresses to his
constituents at Brescia he stigmatized the hostile attitude
of the papal Church toward the Bible. He remarked
that while, after the invention of printing, every press in
Europe was busy printing the Bible, the pope's press
at Subiaco did not put forth a single verse of Scripture.
The remark was followed by this warning : "Woe to the
Roman Catholic Church when my countrymen get hold
of the Old and New Testaments ! . . . Then they will
know the difference between Jesus Christ and His so-
called Vicar."
Zanardelli did not confine his opposition to Roman
Catholicism to words, but took also strong practical
measures against it. Realizing the fact that the Church
was employing her spiritual powers for political aims
Zanardelli promulgated, in January, 1890, the famous
"New Penal Code," which threatens severe punishments
to those priests who abuse their office. Clause 174 runs
thus : "A priest, who, abusing the moral power derived
from his office, incites to the setting aside of the institu
tions and laws of the State; or in any other way to the
neglect of duties due to the country, or inherent in a pub
lic office; or who damages legitimate private interests,
38

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
and disturbs the peace of families, renders himself liable
to fine, imprisonment, and temporary or perpetual sus
pension from office, or from the endowments of his
office."******* The hostile attitude of Zanardelli and Crispi to Roman
Catholicism was shared also by the Hon. Giovanni Bovio,
a member of the House of Deputies and one of the most
famous Italian jurists during the second half of the nine
teenth century. He considered the papal Church "a
branch that is withering on the tree of Christianity," and
is impotent to redeem the peoples for the reason that it is
"outside of Christ."
Again, in contrasting Roman Catholicism and Chris
tianity, he says: "Christianity may yet have a revival
among the people, but Catholicism is hopelessly stagnant."
We will close this chapter by expounding the mind
of Ercole Ricotti, the prominent ecclesiastical historian,
author of "Delia Rivoluzione Protestante" (The Prot
estant Revolution)2 — a book remarkable for wealth
of knowledge and objectivity of judgment. Here and
there Ricotti makes it plain that he did not fail to realize
the historical faults and intrinsic deficiencies of papal
Catholicism. Dealing with the causes which prevented Rome from
making any considerable progress over Protestantism,
after the peace of Westphalia, Ricotti says :
Many of the Tridentine decrees became a dead
letter: the minds of the believers were again in
toxicated with miracles, relics, indulgences, cere-

"In the "Cultura," 5-12 of November, 1894.
'Torino, 1894, Loescher.

39

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
monies void of inward edification; clergy fell
again into the former scandals, ignorance and
grossness; religious orders degenerated. Thus a
good chance was offered to the incredulity of the
eighteenth century (p. 546).
In regard to the effects of the Council of Trent, Ricotti
makes a wonderfully true remark:
The government of the Church (he says) con
formed itself more and more to an absolute
monarchy; so much so, that for three centuries
afterwards there was no Council convoked to
moderate it. This, if from one hand, conferred
unity and vigor to the command, from the other
was hurtful by taking away from the obedience
the stimulus which springs from a spontaneous
persuasion. It proved also harmful by depriving
the supreme authority of that wide perspective
which results from beholding around itself, by
means of frequent general councils, all the needs,
reclamations and defects of each part of the
Church. Such increase of spiritual authority was
obtained by the popes to the detriment of the
authority of the bishops, which was diminished,
not only through the Tridentine decisions, but
much more through the following neglect of the
practice of consulting them in the fundamental
form of the councils. Thus the scattered and
isolated voices of the bishops were oppressed by
the victorious absolutism of the Roman see. (p.
472.)
Speaking of the decline of the Jesuits, Ricotti states
that: The Jesuits have proved harmful to the Catho-
40

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
lie defense, by employing therein a system of
religious and civil morality which does not entirely
conform to the Gospel. They have relied on
imagination and sense rather than reason and
heart. Instead of drawing the strength which
flows directly from the Gospel, they have only
preferred far reflections of it and have made use
of the doubtful authority of modern theologians
and miracles, fortified by half mystic and half
pagan worship, external apparels of chants, music
and ornaments as well as by superstitious prac
tices, (p. 557.)
Ricotti has been also well aware of the papal opposition
to the spirit of modern times, for elsewhere he observes :
Yet Rome has paid no attention to the great
change of the times, and has been affording a
more and more striking contrast with the prin
ciples of European civilization. She has engaged
herself in a sad struggle against progress, which
freely proceeds without her: and, after having
opposed the liberty of the princes, has opposed
also that of the peoples, the fundamental demands
of whom she has refused. Finally she has de
clared her own authority not only immovable and
absolute, but also indissolubly united to a transi
tory, human and material element, the temporal
power. (552.)

41

CHAPTER II.
CONTEMPORARY INTERPRETERS OF THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM
IN ITALY.
In more recent times the realization of the degeneration
of papal Catholicism has grown wider and wider in Italy,
as an examination of the writings of Guerzoni, Negri,
Marselli, Villari, Mariano, Chiappelli, Labanca, Leone
Caetani, Fogazzaro and the Modernists will show us
clearly. Guiseppe Guerzoni, one of the leading modern his
torians of Italy, is strongly opposed to the Catholic or
international ideal of Rome. In his historical essay,
"Arnaldo da Brescia," he looks for the salvation of
religious society in the application to it of the modern
principle of nationality, which broke the religio-political
unity of Middle Ages and brought about the new con
science of nationality. Guerzoni would like to substitute
for the theocratic monarchy of Gregory VII and the
Sacred Roman Empire of Charlemagne national churches,
and expresses the hope that the fall of the temporal
power of the popes may be the way and instrument of
such a religious revolution.
The concentrating organism of Catholicism, he.
says, having been broken, together with the tem
poral scepter of the popes, nations shall be led
to seek in the religious society the same liberty
which has triumphed in the civil. They, perhaps,
shall not change their faith, but only temper it
again at the pure primitive sources. Yet, as the re-
43

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ligious movement of German Old Catholics points,
they shall proclaim the authority of their churches
and substitute for the dissolved Catholic unity a
pact of alliance between the various Christian
societies.
Among the Italian writers who have studied Chris
tianity should be mentioned also Senator Gaetano Negri,1
author of several books on the subject, although, unfor
tunately, he does not always show himself religiously
unprejudiced. Even in his novels and literary essays
Negri is deeply concerned with the religious and spiritual
elements. Like a good many other Italian writers, he sees in
Roman Catholicism a false and sterile form of Chris
tianity. In his scholarly essay "George Eliot"2 after
having dwelt on the spectacle of ecclesiastical rivalries
between the official Church and the dissenters in Eng
land (a spectacle which, according to him, witnesses the

"Gaetano Negri (1832-1902), a thinker, patriot and soldier, was
one of the most interesting Italian figures of the second half of
the nineteenth century. He is author of several books, among
which: "L'imperatore Giuliano I'apostata" (Milano, 1911); "II
cristianesimo nella storia"; "Ultimi saggi" (Milano, Hoepli,
1904); "George Eliot" (Treves, Milano, 1893); "Rumori mon-
dani" (Milano, Hoepli, 1894) ; "Segni dei tempi" (Hoepli, Milano,
1903). Unfortunately, Senator Negri does not always show
himself free from anti-religious prejudices. The first of the
cited books, more especially, though a very valuable historical
study on the Emperor Julian the apostate, yet is lacking in his
torical impartiality. It seems as if the deliberate purpose of the
book is to exalt beyond measure the virtues of the crowned
apostate, in order that discredit and vituperation may be reflected
upon Christianity and the Church.
'Milano, Treves, 1893. 44

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
steady practice of religion and living Christian sentiment
among the Protestant peoples) Negri remarks:
In Catholic countries this neither does nor can
happen. We are accustomed to the dilemma, either
the pope or none, either the Apostolic Roman
Church or nothing; either the unreasonable and
blind homage or the absolute incredulity. This
fact has caused religious sentiment in the Catholic
countries to be suffocated. The churches, more
than elsewhere, are populated with indifferent
men, who enter therein by habit, not conviction.
The dogmatic rigorousness of Catholicism dries, at
its very spring, the religious spontaneity of the
spirit, and makes out of the Catholic countries the
classic land of scepticism and absolute negation.
Then, in the analysis of "Adam Bede" Negri makes
a beautiful comparison between the Christianity of the
Protestant Dinah and that of the Catholic Cardinal
Federigo, in the "I promessi sposi" of Manzoni, and
concludes thus:
The evangelical concept, in its most genuine
essence, is supremely democratic. It is a concept
which had and still has a great efficacy, for the
very fact that it has sprung genuine and pure from
the conscience of human unhappiness. To have
made out of such evangelical concept the basis of
an ecclesiastical institution, with all the attributes of
worldliness, complicated and powerful in its exter
nal organs and its hierarchy, is certainly the most
wonderful proof of the capacity of the human
mind to deceive itself. In Roman Catholicism m
45

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
there exists no longer even the shade of evan
gelical thought and sentiment. The papal institu
tion is, in the conclusion, the very negation of the
thought of Him Who is pretended to have
founded it.
In his "Ultimi Saggi"1, dealing with various literary,
political and social problems, Negri denounces once more
papal Catholicism. In the fifth essay: "Religion and
morals in the teaching," he proceeds to show the excel
lence of Protestantism over Catholicism as a factor of
religious and moral education.
It is evident, he says, that religious teach
ing must be imparted in such wise that while,
on one hand, it adapts itself to certain intellectual
conditions, on the other it does not make further
progress impossible. The whole difficulty con
sists in finding the manner to impart an authori
tative moral teaching without injuring in its germ
the autonomous sentiment of conscience and
thought. In this respect Protestants are in a far
better condition than Catholics ; for the Reforma
tion having removed the intermediaries whom
Catholicism places between man and Divinity, and
given individual conscience the direct responsi
bility of the interpretation of divine will, raised
the sentiment of moral autonomy and opened be
fore man a field of action if not unbounded (for
it is limited by the barriers of anthropomorphic
deism), at least sufficiently broad to satisfy the
exigencies of modern thought.
On the contrary Catholicism, with all its ex-

"Milano, Ulrico Hoepli, 1904. 46

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ternal and hierarchical baggage, extinguishes in
man the sentiment of the responsibility of con
science and accustoms him to repose inert upon
the dictates of a superior infallible authority and
upon the concept that external practices are a
price by which one gains impunity, pardon and
the favor of Divinity. This is par excellence the
pharisaic spirit, against which Jesus shot the
arrows of His incomparable irony. This pre
dominant tendency proves truly fatal both to the
individual and to society; it dries, at its very
source, moral inspiration. It is this tendency
which, even today, manifests itself in the pil
grimages, the claimed miracles, the abuse of cere
monies, and that bigoted, intolerant and insolent
attitude which characterizes the clerical party in
its most pronounced and genuine form (pp. 216,
217).
In the same essay Negri stigmatizes the retrogressive
character of papal Catholicism:
The church, he writes, has stopped at her medie
val point of view and has not been able to emerge
from the ambient of ancient theocracy; accord
ingly she speaks and acts in the name of prin
ciples which are no longer ours and which, if
accepted, would compel humanity to retrace all
its steps (p. 194).
Like other modern religious writers of Italy, Negri
has faced the question of a renewal of papal Catholi
cism, showing himself quite skeptical with regard to its
possibility. Commenting on the religious thesis pre
sented in Zola's novel, "Paris," he writes :
The conversation between the young, reforming
47

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
priest, Froment, and the old pope expresses with
efficacy the antinomy of two convictions equally
sincere, the conviction which exacts the renewal
of Catholicism, and the conviction which affirms
such renewal impossible. In fact it is evident
that Catholicism cannot live and adapt itself to
civilization, unless it admits in practice what it
refuses and condemns in theory. Catholicism is
either a theocracy or nothing at all. Now then,
theocracy leads back to the Middle Ages, to the
intellectual and political supremacy, whereas
modern society proceeds through a way leading
to a diametrically opposed goal. We therefore
easily understand the fact that there are Catholics
of good faith and enthusiasts who desire the re
newal of Catholicism. But the truth is that Ca
tholicism is not renewable, for renewing it would
mean to injure the essential principle of its exist
ence and to destroy it. Men of the highest genius
and great souls have more than once attempted
to bring into Catholicism a principle of renewal,
but in vain. Rosmini and Dollinger have striven,
to their own hurt, against the irremovableness
of the papal "non possumus." Now a disinter
ested observer must acknowledge that the "non
possumus" of Catholicism is truly justified by the
nature itself of the institution which personifies it.
In fact the whole force of Catholicism is in its
immobility and in the absolute rigor of a con
stitution which subtracts intelligence from the dis
quietude of liberty and gives it the peace of
certainty. If Catholicism would only begin to
oscillate on its own foundations, it could stand
48

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
no longer on its position and would lose all
attraction for those who turn to it, in order to find
therein a safe harbor to their troubled and fright
ened consciences."1
In his essay "Religion and morals in the teaching2,"
Negri, dealing with the difficulties confronting the prob
lem of religious education in Italian schools, because of
the antagonism between the Church and the State, makes
very interesting remarks. He premises that, 1 : Religi
ous sentiment is an indispensable element of the human
spirit. 2: This sentiment, because of the cultural con
ditions of most men, cannot do without a concrete form.
3: The Catholic form, in all the rigor of its authorita
tive principle, is not in accord with the critical and scien
tific spirit of our time. 4 : The creation of a new form is
impossible, for all the cultured men, from whom the
initiative should start, feel the inanity of form, whatever
it may be, and, consequently, do not know from whence
to draw the necessary energy for the great enterprise."
Then he adds :
The only way to avoid a catastrophe, is to come
to a "modus vivendi," tacitly admitted both by
the Church and the State, by which the State
should never antagonize the Church (rather it
should lend her all that protection and support
which is consistent with the fundamental prin
ciples of modern society) : and the Church, on
her part, should make up her mind to acknowl
edge "de facto" that condition of things which
she so loudly refuses and abhors in theory.
Had our political revolution taken place in the
'"Ultimi Saggi," p. 159.
'"Ultimi Saggi," p. 227. 49

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
sixteenth century, it would have certainly gene
rated an Italian Luther, and between Italy and the
Roman Church would have raged a war which
most likely would have ended in the reformation
of the Church. But, in our days, the advent of a
Luther would leave us entirely indifferent. If
we look deep down in our soul and in that of those
who surround us, we find there a dose of skepti
cism sufficient to blunt the arrows of the most
powerful and convinced reformer.
An open conciliation between the Church and
the State is not possible, for it could not be brought
about without an abdication of one or the other:
and it is evident that the two fundamental prin
ciples of liberty and authority being at stake, such
abdication would mean to the State, or to the
Church, suicide. Whenever men have attempted
a reconciliation, the instinct of self-preservation
has prevented both parties from taking the fatal
step. (p. 227.)
It seems therefore, Negri continues, that we
have reached an insoluble difficulty; for, on the
one hand, a dogmatic and hierarchical reform of
Catholicism, analogous to that of the sixteenth
century, is now unaccomplishable (because of the
impossibility to circumscribe the reform within
the limits of deism) ; and, moreover, the genuine
tendency and spirit of Catholicism cannot be har
monized with the exigencies of modern thought.
On the other hand, the moral teaching of the
majority of the people is possible only through
religion. Where then will Catholic people find
a way out? 50

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
The difficulty is so great that some despair of
the possibility of solving it. The solution, how
ever, is perhaps less hard than we think. We
might apply to the question of the teaching the
methods and habits of common life. What do
we see therein? We see that great many, nay,
countless persons, believe and call themselves
Catholic, yet they speak and act in such wise as
to put themselves in a continuous contradiction
to the indisputable precepts of the Church. Four-
fifths of the Italians who hear Mass are excom
municated: yet none are concerned. This can
happen because dogma and doctrine have lost a
great part of their importance. They gradually
have disappeared from the conscience of the
individual, and the external form appears, by and
by and almost inadvertently, what it really is,
namely a mere symbol, giving concreteness to one
of the most profound and spontaneous sentiments
of the human soul. It is just such reform,
brought about inadvertently," and gradually, that
ought to be favored and promoted, for it is only
through it that a religious teaching, respecting the
rights and duties of conscience, becomes effectively
possible. The question here is not of a doctrinal
and dogmatic reform, which would be, as we have

"Renan also indicated an analogous manner, in which he thought
the old Catholicism could still be able to evolve itself and pro
gress. He did not think that the papal Church could ever be led
to retract any religious matter ; yet he deemed it possible that she
could allow some antiquated teachings to fall tacitly into oblivion.
"The Catholic Church," he wrote in one of his letters, "will never
be able to confess that she changes, but she will be able to allow a
good deal to lapse." 51

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
repeatedly said, lirr^possible and useless. Only
this is intended : to let religion throw off, for itself,
all its apparently scientific scoriae; to lessen, as
much as possible, the concrete, real and objective
importance of rite; and to raise, in its stead, its
symbolic character, freeing from the fetters of
formalism its spirit, which alone can quicken it.
At the same time all the endeavors of educators
should be directed to create, through the per
spective of the ideals of the human soul and the
affirmation of the finality of life, the sentiment
of the responsibility of individual conscience.
(pp. 217, 218.)
Pavissich1 and other papal sociologists maintain that
the Roman Catholic Church holds the key for the solu
tion of the social problem. But Negri did not think so.
In the essay "Nerone e il Christianesimo'" he shows
the impossibility of a socialization of Roman Catholi
cism: The program of a social Catholicism, he says,
which would replace socialism, or, at least, make
it useless and inefficacious, will never succeed in
anything else but a rhetorical declamation or a
political artifice. Catholicism can have no points
of contact with the ideals of socialism, for, even
as the other organisms constituted upon a hier
archical mechanism, it is interested in keeping,
within the social structure, not only what is neces
sary and right, but also what is (or can be)
excessive and iniquitous. Roman Catholicism
cannot be led back to primitive Christianity, as
"A. Pavissich, "La Questione Sociale," Treviso, Buffetti, 1902.
*G. Negri, "Ultimi Saggi," Hoepli, 1904.
52

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
many ingenuous souls ardently desire, for the
reason that it is a religion essentially different
from the primitive type, a religion framed on
Greek metapjrysics and Roman government, a
religion which imposed itself upon the world by
way of an unconscious but necessary equivoke;
for, without rigorousness of dogma and strength
of administrative organization the Christian God
(who answered, in truth, the determined needs
of humanity) could not have withstood the sub-
tility of Greek thought and the furor of heresies
and sects. Once the equivoke is discovered,
Catholicism has no longer reason to exist. And
since Catholicism cannot renounce living, it does
not allow anything within and about itself to be
touched, thus remaining unmovable and immu
table.
******* Nicola Marselli, a prominent sociologist and writer of
Southern Italy, sees in Roman Catholicism a force es
sentially antagonistic to scientific and social progress.
In his deep essay "Gli Italiani del Mezzogiomo"1 he
sets himself to illustrate the religio-political harmony
within the German and Anglo-Saxon States, a harmony
which he ascribes to the Protestant religion. He says
in part: In Germany and England religious studies ad
vance equally with the scientific ones, nay, science
itself protects them. Theology there does not
seem excessively distrustful of science which
respects religion, and, accordingly, it strives to
become scientific. In the practical life there
"Roma, 1884, Casa Editrice Sommaruga. 53

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
reigns the same harmony between a religion which
does not disavow the state (not even when this
assumes the free forms of England and America)
and a state which profits by religion. To the
mind of the politician such equilibrium in the cir
culation of the blood in the German and Anglo-
Saxon societies appears as a fortunate condition
of things to assure the normal development of
the state. The reverse is the case with Latin
peoples troubled, disordered, unbalanced by that
Catholicism in which some have the blind audacity
to see salvation, whereas the deep remark on it
by Macchiavelli shall always hold good. Roman
Catholic religion on the one side, science and
nationalism on the other, are essentially divergent
forces; wherefore religious recrudescences in
Latin countries, for which religion is personified
by the Catholic Church, cannot take place but
with a detriment to scientific development and
danger to free institutions.
******* Passing then to Senator Pasquale Villari, the great
historian of the Florentine Republic, and of Macchiavelli
and Savonarola, Raffaele Mariano rightly taxes him with
not having attached to the religious problem in Italy a
greater importance. Here and there, in his scholarly
works, Villari asserts that there is neither religion nor
faith in Italy, and that the religious sense is wholly
absorbed by external worship and practice. He also
says that religion with Italians, when it is not positive
superstition, is traditional habit, not a living faith. All
this does indirectly, yet clearly, express the thought of
Villari concerning the spiritual inefficiency of Roman
Catholicism. In all his historical works and essays he
54

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
makes it plain that his ideal of religion is different from
that of Rome. Thus, for instance, in his admirable
conference on Savonarola,1 after having stated that the
religious sense has steadily weakened among Italians,
he says: We require the sanctifying aid of religion,
which alone is qualified to force the fervor of
charity on all with the unquestionable authority
that comes from above. But it must be a religion
such as Savonarola sought to establish : one fitted
to exercise a purifying influence on the country
and helping to forward all social progress.
* * * * * * *
Among the contemporary interpreters of the religious
problem in Italy Raffaele Mariano2 is doubtless the
"'Studies Historical and Critical" Scribner's, 1907.
'Raffaele Mariano was born in Capua (Southern Italy) in
1840 and studied law in Naples ; then went over to philosophy in
the school of Augusto Vera, a zealous follower of Hegel. In
1885 he was made professor of Church History in the University
of Naples, and died in Florence in the beginning of 1912. He has
been the most sound and fecund Italian religious writer of the
latter part of the ninetenth century. The religious problem in
Italy filled and profoundly troubled his whole noble life. His
activity as a teacher, lecturer and publicist has been simply pro
digious. Fruits of his laborious studies on religious subjects are
the following scholarly works : "II Cristianesimo nei Primi
Secoli," Firenze, Barbera, 1902; "Gli Evangeli Sinottici"; Cris
tianesimo, Cattolicesimo e Civilta"; "II Problema Religioso in
Italia" ; "I Rapporti dello Stato con la Religione" ; "Roma nel
medioevo" ; "La Liberta di Coscienza" ; "Studi Critici sulla Filoso
fia della Religione"; "Papa, Clero e Politica Ecclesiastica in
Italia" ; "Su pel Campo della Religione, della Storia e della
Chiesa" ; "II Ritorno delle Chiese Cristiane all'unita Cattolica."
Mariano has, besides, written several other books on social and
political subjects. All his works have been published, in several
volumes, by the editor, G. Barbera, of Firenze, under the title,
"Scritti Varii." 55

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
greatest. None among the Italians of our age has been
so deeply concerned with the problems of the spirit as
has he; none has had a clearer vision of the close rela
tion of religious principles and doctrines to the redemp
tion and moral regeneration of the people. Mariano is
in great sympathy with Protestantism. In his several
books he extols again and again the ethical, spiritual and
social superiority of Protestantism over Roman Cathol
icism. In his "II Ritorno delle Chiese Cristiane all'unita Cat
tolica" (Firenze. Opere, Vol. VII) he speaks thus of the
conditions of the world and Protestantism:
It is very strange to witness the facility and
resoluteness of Leo XIII, in inviting Protestants
to become again Catholic, claiming that the work
of Luther, after only four centuries of existence,
has suffered shipwreck and has shown itself as
being something quite human.
But, as a matter of fact, if we look at the
Protestant world, we find therein nothing which
in truth points to it as decayed and exhausted.
First of all, it is a world steadily increasing
numerically and even in a greater proportion than
the Catholic.1
If we are to believe statistics, Protestant peo
ples increase and multiply more rapidly than the
Catholic. If then we look at it as it actually is,
4Prof. Giorgio Bartoli asserts that the evangelicals outnumber
the Catholics by 18 millions. See "II Cristianesimo Primitivo e il
Suo Sistema Scientifico," Firenze, 1911. The Rev. Thomas Hard
ing estimates the number of Roman Catholic Christians to be 216
millions, and the non-Roman Christians, 250 millions. See
"Catholic or Roman Catholic," Milwaukee, Wise, The Young
Churchman Co., 1916. 56

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
we realize that, in spite of its defects and im
perfections, inherent to and inseparable from all
that exists, it is a world marvelous for the ex
uberance of its ethical and spiritual forces. The
Catholic world, in many respects, suffers by com
parison. It is not the Catholic nations, but the
evangelical that have taken, and still maintain, the
supremacy in the course of history. Whether
we are willing to admit it or not, it is a fact that
all the prompting and directing ideas of modern
culture come from the peoples of the Reforma
tion; and the Catholic ones, almost drawn by
those ideas, either submit themselves to them, or,
at the most, appropriate to themselves their
results (p. 437) .
In the following chapter, dealing with the impossi
bility of a return of the evangelical Churches to Cathol
icism, Mariano returns to commend the spirit and power
of Protestant religion.
It is natural, he writes, that the Protestant, hav
ing been obliged to rely, in the process of his
reconciliation with God, upon his own forces,
(upon the energy of his faith and will — sup
ported, of course, by divine truth and grace),
should end in differing substantially from the
Catholic. We must admit the trepidations, re
morses, doubts and painful anxieties to which is
exposed a soul struggling to raise itself to God,
to unite with Him, and to feel Him, living and
speaking, in its own depths. Yet just in this
lies the root of that strong spiritual life and that
high consciousness of his value and moral power
to which the Protestant rises, a consciousness to
57

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
which the Catholic hardly will ever attain. This
is the reason why the interior vigor of Protestant
peoples is stronger than that of the Catholic. This
is what accounts also for the fact that Protestants
excel Catholics not only in the field of religion
and spirituality, but also in practical, social, and
scientific activity.
Generally we do not seem to think that North
America, the true New World, so youthfully bold
and exuberant with life and force, is a product
of evangelical conscience. Not all know how
great the religion which gives warmth to the hearts
of Americans is. Mostly we are unaware of the
ethical authority which is at the disposal of the
American Churches and the social efficacy which
they exert.
Both private and public American life have
their most profound foundations in religion. The
same, more or less, applies also to England. Even
of her marvelous power, which has enabled her
to create an empire, over which truly the sun
never sets, and to spread her influence even to the
remotest parts of the earth, we may say that it is
founded essentially upon a true, religious and
Christian thought, and a strong adoration of God
(p. 458).
Mariano has realized what the Papacy is in itself as
well as in its relation to Italy more fully than any other
Italian thinker.
In his // Cristianesimo nei Primi Secoli? after having
proved that the Papacy could not have risen and lived
without any communication of divine breath, he proceeds
*G. Barbera, Firenze, 1902. 58

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
to show that not all is divine within it, and that, on the
contrary, it has finally become, to a great extent, just
what it ought not to have become.
First of all, he says, it has assumed a quite
temporal nature. It has not abhorred the greed
which always follows worldliness. It has appro
priated to itself all the cunning arts, the iniquitous
tendencies and corrupt habits which are insepa
rable from politics, diplomacy, and from earthly
interests, needs and appetites.
Gradually the Papacy has subjected to its
despotic and terrible centralization the whole
Church; and around itself, in the faithful laity
as well as in the clergy, it has extinguished liberty
of movement and thought. Thus the motto of
Pius IX, "I am the Church," has at length been
fully realized.
Again by the Vatican Council it has been pro
claimed almighty, infallible, it has been almost
divinized: and this in the very moment when the
sentiment of the times and the religio-moral con
victions of the intelligent and cultured Christian
world were more repugnant to it.
Finally, what is still worse, the Papacy has
entirely divested itself of the genuine and spiritual
purpose of the Gospel. It has plunged into a
muddy ocean of acts of worship and prayers, in
dulgences, penances, practices of devotion and
belief in miracles which are unspiritual, mechani
cal, grossly superstitious and even grotesque. By
its mode of understanding and worshipping the
divine, it has caused and is still fomenting the
59

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
most unspeakable degeneration of faith and de
votion (p. 438-439).
Moreover, Mariano concerns himself with the papal
Catholicism in its relation to Italy and lays the strongest
charges at its door.
Nowadays, he says, there is in America, Eng
land, Germany, and in France itself, a remarkable
revival of religious studies, activity of inward faith
and operative Christian love. On the contrary,
one may say that Italy has even lost the perception
of the true spiritual and moral nature of Chris
tianity and Church. The papal Catholics in Italy
seem to reduce the life of the soul and the power
of religion more or less to the external ceremonies
and ecclesiastical functions, without ever realizing
that both such things are founded upon a reality
of a deeper spiritual nature. It seems that they
never happen to ask themselves to what depths
the Italian Church, its faith, its worship and
morals have fallen (p. 444).
It seems that Mariano, whose mind is constantly pre
occupied with the solution of the religious problem in
Italy, absolutely cannot forgive Roman Catholicism for
its deleterious influence upon the religious conscience of
his people. In his "L'individuo e lo Stato"1 he returns
to the attack: Under the secular burden of the irreligious and
pagan papal Catholicism the Italian conscience
has been dissolved into incredulity and idolatry.
Certainly the form taken by Christianity under
the action of the Papacy represented once a great

"Milano, Fratelli Treves, 1886. 60

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
and powerful organism, rich in life and efficient
historical energy. But afterwards, exhausted of
historical sense and true spiritual power, the
Papacy has gradually become an immense and
monstrous mechanism, which can neither excite
nor satisfy the need of the inner life of the people.
Wherever papal Catholicism penetrates and
presses, there is inertia and impassibility of con
science. It suffocates it, for it takes away from
it every genuinely spiritual inspiration and fervor
(p. 262).
In the chapter : "Italians and Catholicism" he remarks :
We have a religion which is slavery for con
science and spirit ; we have a clergy who insinuate
themselves among the people, especially the work
ing classes, not to uplift their minds and hearts,
but to lower and darken, through superstition,
ignorance and error ; a clergy who from the pulpit
and confessional, both by teaching and example,
debase the sentiment and brutalize the character
of our people (p. 266).
Yet again, after having proved that religion and faith
are the salvation of a nation, Mariano remarks :
But religion also does send nations to perdition
and it is the chief cause of decay and death for
them, when shut in itself, grown rigid in ancient
formulas and dogmatism, impervious to any new
light of liberty and of truth, it inoculates within
nations its maxims, its habits, its principles which
are sterile, obsolete, opposed to the actual needs
of society and contrary to the living spirit which
rules history and leads the world. . . . It is
then reasonable to argue that Italy, with the papal
61

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Catholicism, which means without true religion,
will have neither science, nor philosophy, neither
social nor economical progress (p. 296).
In the second Volume of the "II Cristianesimo nei
Primi Secoli,"1 Mariano begins to assault the unity of
supreme personal magistery, usually so much extolled
by Roman apologists.
Ruggiero Bonghi, he says, liked to point to
Catholic unity as though a great benefit; whereas
such sepulchral, forced and violent unity, wherein
one man has arrogated to himself the right to
think and speak for all Christians, has been to us
Italians a source of dullness, quietism, inward
stagnation, abasement and corruption. It is true
that not only in Italy, but everywhere, even in
Protestant countries, the souls appear today dis
tracted and alienated from religion. Yet we
should not fail to realize that with the peoples
of the Reformation, in England and Germany,
along with the religious indifference and scepti
cism, move also lively spiritual currents and strong
moral energies, which resist and contest the field
with the negative and dissolving forces. It is not
arbitrary to foresee that some day a new and sound
awakening of religious faith shall take place in the
bosom of those peoples, as well as a richer effusion
of Christian spirit. In Italy there is no sign of
fervent religious activity, of spiritual contrasts and
struggles, just because of the iron unity of papal
magistery. We have then the right to ask if it
is really worth while keeping ourselves so close

"Raffaele Mariano, Scritti Vari, Volume V.
62

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
to such unity. Far more desirable would seem
a little more of sincere faith, and a bit of genuinely
Christian morality, together with a more living
interest in religion and all that is connected there
with (p. 139).
It is further interesting to know what Mariano thinks
of the future of the Papacy. We believe that, in dealing
with this subject, none among Italians and few even
among the foreigners, have shown a deeper insight or a
more balanced faculty of judgment. Mariano keeps the
middle ground between such as deem a liberal develop
ment of the Papacy absolutely impossible and such as
see it close at hand. He is neither sceptical nor over
confident. Moreover, he does not entertain the illusion
of a great many among the radical Protestants that there
shall be no place for the Papacy in the Christianity of the
future. It is worth while to reproduce Mariano's admir
able paragraph: Will the day ever come, he asks himself, when
the Papacy shall acquire conscience of its own
faults and sorrowfully change its course? As for
myself, I believe that such a day has to come,
soon or late. Nay, it seems to me that the dawn
has already appeared. There is something
changed in the life of the Church, or, at least,
something that moves and begins to change. The
fact that the pope and his church have been de
prived of temporal power is a great historical
achievement, destined in the future to exert in
the Catholic world a deeper influence than we
may actually measure. As a consequence of the
loss of the temporal power the Papacy will realize
that different historical and moral conditions
63

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
have been created around itself. Being thus placed
in the midst of the struggle for life, it will be
compelled to fight, in order to achieve its reason
and right to exist. A struggle such as this implies
a tension of spirit; which, in its turn, calls for
forces and weapons spiritual. Today, unless
equipped with liberty and the arguments of intel
lect and reason, one would try in vain to enter
the battlefield of life. Indeed, no doubtful signs
have already appeared that the papal clergy are
gradually training themselves in the exercise of
liberty, the use of rational and scientific methods,
and forms of action suitable to the modern exigen
cies of intellectual, social, ethical and political life.
It would therefore seem that if research, studies,
criticism, liberty and reason will not be the poison
that will kill the Papacy, they will, at least, be
the energy which will lead it to correct itself.
It is not to be presumed that all these things will
not, at length, force it to re-enter the limits of
discretion and reasonableness, consistent with the
liberty of the Christian soul, and in accord with
the essentially spiritual nature of Christianity.
Wherefore nothing shall prevent papal Cathol
icism from throwing off the rags of vulgar be
liefs, habits and forms of worship which debase
it and make it unable to satisfy a seriously and
highly felt religious need.
Moreover, the Papacy shall realize that the
Church is not to be kept a slave, but to be roused,
so that the Holy Spirit may freely run through
it and move it and the Christian truth may grow
within it and become a leaven of vigorous in-
64

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
terior life, instead of being, as it is now, a rigid and
sterile formula, mechanically enjoined from with
out. Then the great ecclesiastical assizes, the
Ecumenical Councils, shall at last resume their
natural place, as in the early centuries, and their
value of supreme collective representation of the
thought of the Church. And the pope, in his
turn, shall cease to exert over the Church his
suffocating terrorism, to return to his office as
executor of the mind of the Church and unificator
of its government. He would be then no longer
the extinguisher of movement and life, but the
hub and defense of spiritual tradition springing
from universal conscience of the Church and
expressing itself, throughout the ages, under the
form of counciliar definitions. In this manner
only the Papacy, harmonizing in itself liberty and
authority, movement and order, could become
again a great wholesome force in the Church; a
force for the conservation and security of the his
torical Christian tradition and the profession of
the Christian faith and, at the same time, a force
of progress in the understanding and deepening
of the truths of the same faith and in the spread
ing of their ethical and social efficacy in the world
and in history.
These are forecasts over which it would be
actually hazardous to rely too strongly. Yet they
are not wanting in likelihood. In England, Ger
many, America, where peoples are endowed with
a living religious sentiment and for whom religion
is, to use Hegel's expression, "the greatest feast
of life," and even in France, it is improbable
65

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
whether the Papacy and its Catholicism will last
in their present condition. The Papacy has re
ceived a deep wound; it is now vacillating, and
one cannot see how it could be ultimately able to
avoid a radical change. As to Catholicism, such
as it has shaped itself under the papal influence,
it clashes too vitally with the fundamental intui
tions of the modern world. That it may envelop
itself more and more within its own system and
hermetically seal itself therein, as a silkworm in
its cocoon, is neither probable nor possible. In
the course of its development Catholicism has
pushed itself to the extreme limit,1 and it has
reached the most acute and insuperable point.
And forasmuch as there is no way to go farther,
it is necessary to go back ; it is necessary that the
Papacy and Catholicism surrender to the dictates
of reason, more particularly to those of the spir
itual truth of Christianity and the needs of the
developed and mature Christian conscience. One
would lose his faith in the divine providence; one
would not believe any longer that God keeps His
hand over the moral government of the world
were he to suppose that such is but a dream.
(P. 440 and fol.)
Mariano rejects the Papacy, in its actual form; yet his
historical scholarship and sound judgment do> not allow
him to disavow the institutional elements of Christianity.
He regards institutions as an essential element of the
Christian system and looks to the episcopal principle as
"Renan had expressed nearly the same opinion, by stating that :
"The Papacy by its latest exaggerations has prepared for itself a
destiny impossible to forecast." (Letter of March 15, 1872.)
66

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
to the one which incarnates more genuinely the mind of
the Founder of the Christian Church.
Speaking of the method and criterion to be employed
in the investigation of the elements which determined the
constitution of the early Church, Mariano remarks:
We hear a great many affirming that the great.
simplicity of apostolic time did actuate the true
Christian life, in which there was no need of de
velopment, and that the complex organization
which took place afterwards was neither neces
sary nor legitimate.
Some others, on the contrary, pretend to dem
onstrate that the apostles themselves instituted
everything, that is, not only the Episcopate, but
even the Papacy, and almost the Roman Curia it
self, which with all its greed and corruption, is
but the caricature and satire of Christ and His
apostles. Again, others deny that the Christian
Church derived its organical institutions gradual
ly, partly from the immanent nature of its scope
and partly from the mutual equilibrium between
the idealities of its spirit and the real and prac
tical necessities of life. They endeavor to prove
that it copied them from the administrative, eco
nomical, political and religious government of the
pagan world, in the midst of which it matured its
existence. As long as we continue such reasoning, we shall
not accomplish anything. The ancient organiza
tion of the Church is such as it was formed by
the divine idea with which Christianity was in
wardly animated as well as by the inclinations,
tendencies and the indefectible and unalienable
67

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
needs of men, through which and by which the
same organization was called to make itself ef
fectual.
Then Mariano adds :
It is here, in the original elements of the apos
tolic age, that we find the criterion by which to
judge to what extent the Church's institutions in
carnate the thought of Christ and the essential
principles of Christianity; or, on the contrary,
how far they are the product of changing and
transitory historical circumstances, and, as such,
liable to transformation and even to dissolution.
Thus, for instance, it is not an unimportant fact
that the principle of episcopacy should have
sprung from the very depths of Christian com
munities by a natural necessity of development,
an active necessity which already manifested it
self in the apostolic age ; whereas the principle of
the Papacy is a mere historical formation which
was later and gradually imposed upon the Cath
olic Church, at the time when the Church, having
met with the barbarians, had to meet new prob
lems and face new destinies." (P. 251.)
Mariano further maintains that the episcopal is the
most ideal system of Christianity, for there order and
liberty, the historical basis of Christian faith and the
movement of reason, the stability of tradition and the
activity of the human soul — things that cannot be associ
ated within the papal system — would become reconciled
with each other. He expresses his strong faith in the
power of the episcopal principle in the following terms:
The episcopal system, understood not as a
theocratic ordinance, but as an organization and
68

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
as a form of the Church's government, is not
something which has nowadays lost, as some seem
to think, every legitimate reason for existence.
To reconstitute within the conduct and the gov
ernment of the Christian Church a collective rep
resentation, which, gathering the pious and be
lieving sentiment of the faithful, as well as the
enlightened and penetrative views of the cultured
theologians, culminates in the Episcopate, might
be the middle ground between the extreme and
subversive Protestantism and the papal Catholi
cism, the latter made up of temporal interests and
diplomatic craft and maintained by intolerance
and abuse of power. Indeed, the episcopal and
synodal constitution of the first centuries would
not seem an unfit means to give back to the life
of the Church that basis of firm and stable author
ity, capable of preventing the disorders and devi
ations of the single individual atoms, the defect of
which is the weak and vulnerable point of Prot
estantism — its heel of Achilles — and its principle
of unbounded liberty of examination. On the
other hand, this kind of large representation of the
Church, confided to the Episcopate, would prom
ise to be an obstruction to the infallible and suf
focating absolutism of the Papacy and its worldly
ambitions, which are the great evil of the Cathol
icism of the actual Roman Curia, its cardinals
and prelates. (P. 131.)
******* Among the contemporary Italian writers, who have
dealt with Christianity, a remarkable place is held by
69

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Professor Alessandro Chiappelli,1 author of several books
on the subject. He seems to lean toward the radical
school of Harnack. In his "Cristianesimo Antico,'" deal
ing with the historical development of the millennarian
ideas among the early Christians, he maintains that the
multiplications of beliefs and the rise of new religious
forms, which Roman Catholic apologists point to as a
clear sign of Protestant disintegration, are, on the con
trary, an evidence of the self-renewal of the religious
conscience of the peoples.
That contemporary growth of religious forms,
he says, in England and America, rather than
hinting a dying religious inspiration, seem the
symptom of something that renews itself. The
work of dogmatic demolition and political strug
gle against theocracy which has been proceeding
"Senator Alessandro Chiappelli is a professor of the history of
philosophy at the University of Naples and a specialist in religious
matters. He has made interesting researches in subjects con
nected with the history of early Christianity, as, for instance, the
Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, the Shepherd of Hermas, the
Epistle of Barnabas, the Doctrine of Resurrection in the first
centuries, the historical development of the millennarian ideas
among the Christians, the apologies and apologists of Christian
ity, the recent discoveries bearing on the history of ancient Chris
tianity, etc.
In his "Studi di Antica Letteratura Cristiana" he states that he
has been helped, in some of his researches, by the distinguished
Italian professors, D. Comparetti, B. Malfatti and A. Del Vecchio.
Among Chiappelli's books, known also outside Italy, are the
following very remarkable: "Studi di antica letteratura cris
tiana." Torino, Loescher, 1887 ; "Saggi e Note Critiche," Bologna,
Zanichelli, 1895 ; "Nuove Pagine sui Cristianesimo Antico,"
Firenze, Le Monnier, 1902.
"'Nuove Pagine sui Cristianesimo Antico," Firenze, Le Mon
nier, 1902. 70

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
for more than a century, has, by its steady sub
traction of force and action from the idea of the
divine and the supernatural, in the mind and soul,
created a religious crisis in modern society. Yet
the same work of demolition seems, among some
peoples, especially the Anglo-Saxons, to have
started a revival of a reconciliation of religion
with science and criticism, rather than to have ex
tinguished in them religious spirit and vitality.
(P. 173.)
During the struggles between Pope Pius X and the
Italian Modernists, Prof. Chiappelli expressed, in various
writings, his sympathy with the modernistic movement.
To us, he wrote, who look at this rude debate
of today from the outside, and consequently, with
liberty of spirit and serenity of soul, it seems that
the necessity of the times should induce the Church
not to try the restoration of a doctrine in great
part dead, and to insist on the formal and inward
unity of minds, but rather to quicken and uplift
the spirit and religious sense which is vanishing
among peoples, especially the Latins. Disciplin
ing the habits of the clergy ; purifying and simpli
fying worship; drawing liturgical prayer nearer
the soul of the people, through a more frequent
use of the vulgar tongue; removing from the
Churches all those factitious and mawkish orna
ments which today debase them and offend art
as well as religion; diffusing the use and popular
reading of the Gospels and the purest sources of
Christian life; all this, is it not something better
than to try to repress, through solemn forms of
71

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
authority, all the living principles of spiritual
liberty ?
******* A book published a few years ago by Baldassarre La-
banca,1 professor of the history of Christianity at the
University of Rome, attracted the keenest attention of
Italian intellectual classes. It is a critical and scientific
study of the Papacy.2 The origin, the struggles and vic
issitudes as well as the future destinies of the Papacy are
treated by Prof. Labanca, who displays in his book an
historical knowledge as deep as his critical insight.
Regarding the origin of the Papacy, Prof. Labanca
affirms that it is nothing but a creation of the civil genius
of Rome, even as the Reformation is, to a great extent,
a creation of German genius.
To the Catholics, he says, the Papacy is a
divine institution, and, accordingly, a creation of
the religious genius of Christ. On the contrary,
to the Protestants the Papacy is a creation of
the genius of evil, of anti-Christ, to whom the New
Testament alludes. To the old Catholics, headed
by the famous theologian, Dollinger, the Papacy
is the altered primacy of the Church. Well, what
must I say on these different propositions? It

"Baldassarre Labanca, professor of religion at the University of
Rome, has published several books, pamphlets and articles on
religious and ecclesiastical matter which have made his name illus
trious in Italy as well as abroad. His scholarship has been ac
knowledged by foreign writers, as, for instance, K. Wirner (Die
Italianische Philosophie) ; R. Flint (Philosophy as "scientia sci-
entiarum") ; M. Vernes, Revue philosophique; C. Bonnet-Maury,
Revue de l'histoire des religions; A. Naville, Bibliotheque uni
versale et Revue Suisse.
'"II Papato," Fratelli Bocca, 1905. 72

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
has been demonstrated that the institution of the
Papacy is not found in the Bible. The Catholic
belief concerning the origin of the Papacy is in
contrast with the New Testament, with the crit
ical and historical exegesis and the history of the
Church, impartially examined. Though not a
proselyte of the old Catholics, yet I agree with
their great leader that the Papacy, in its present
universal and infallible autocracy, does not in the
least represent early Catholicism, the authority of
which was invested in the Episcopate assembled
in Council, and not in one bishop, who is a dic
tator and legislator of the universal Church. The
Papacy, in its actual form, is a deviation from the
primitive Christian doctrine. (P. 313.)
Of Roman Catholicism, Prof. Labanca says:
To the Roman Catholics true religion is noth
ing but dogma and authority. They will never
persuade themselves that religion is by far more
efficient and beneficial when it has fewer dogmas
and more moral sentiment; less external authority
and more inward authority of conscience. Dur
ing the primitive ages of Christianity neither the
multiplicity of dogmas nor absolute authority
constituted Christian life). He was being ac
knowledged as a Christian who lived doing good
in the name of God and the Christ of God. To
day we wish to return to this great ideal, from
which Christian Churches have gone far, more
particularly the Roman Catholic, which emphasizes
dogmas and authority and has little or no fervent
religious sentiment at all. (P. 420.)
73

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
In regard to the modern currents within the Roman
Church, Prof. Labanca writes:
The liberal Catholic movement has increased
year by year, not only in Germany, but also in
France and in Italy. It is endorsed by young and
cultured priests, and is worthy, indeed, of consid
eration; but their good intentions break against
the vehement waves which move in the ocean of
the Vatican. They will not obtain durable re
sults as long as they live in the persuasion that
one must believe the dogma of the Infallibility
and admit the admonitions and decisions of the
Papacy to be not censurable and not to be ap
pealed from. Their publications have been al
ready condemned and the authors held in sus
picion. Let us be instructed by what has hap
pened in Germany to Kraus and Ehrardt; in
France to Loisy and Houtin, and in Italy to Min-
occhi, Semeria and Murri. The new Catholics
have fallen into various mistakes. They believe
possible a reform "with" the pope, so many times
demanded and yet never obtained; and that cur-
ialism and Jesuitism, which are the pivots of
Roman ecclesiastical authority, can be beaten down
without an active and resolute resistance. Why
do they not remember the memorable resistance
of Paul to Peter, in Antioch, which decided the
future of Christianity against Judaism? (P. 407.)
A further motive for our being grateful to Prof. La
banca is that he deals also with the problem of the unity
of Catholicism and Protestantism.
The majority of Protestants and Catholics, he
writes, are convinced that the evangelical Church
74

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
shall never become Catholic, and vice versa.
Nevertheless, it is not rare that Protestants turn
Catholics and Catholics become Protestants. Now
adays, in Austria, one hears frequently the cry:
"Los von Rom" (let us leave Rome), a cry which
induces many Catholics to endorse Protestantism.
Catholics and Protestants who think of the
traditional enmity and also of the undeniable doc
trinal disparities lean toward a more resolute di
vision between the two Christian confessions.
Those, on the contrary, who think of some in
contestable affinities, incline, if not to reunion, at
least to a "modus vivendi." Because of such
dogmatic affinity and other relationships between
Protestantism and Catholicism, we think that they
could, if not unite, at least live together peaceful
ly, one emulating the other in furthering the moral
and civil progress in the world.
But why is it that a decisive conciliation be
tween Catholics and Protestants is so difficult?
The supreme reason is that Protestants cannot and
do not wish to submit to the unbounded author
ity of the Papacy. . . . Fortunately there are
nowadays Catholics and Protestants of good will,
who are trying to bring about a tolerant recipro
cal attitude. They insist on it, so much the more
in that they are growing aware of a widely irre
ligious science threatening and attacking both the
Churches. But, on the other hand, the differ
ences between the two confessions being so con
siderable, especially in regard to the absolute au
thority of the Papacy, which Protestants have
disavowed and still disavow, every attempt at re-
75

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
union has been frustrated. Catholicism is es
sentially a religion of authority, and, on this re
gard, it will never give up. As such, it is a product
/ of the Latin genius, which prevailed in the Cath-
/ olic Church after the fall of the Roman empire.
On the contrary, Protestantism is a religion of
liberty, that is of free though, free belief, free
conscience. It is also a religion of authority, but
of an authority not so much external and com
mitted to its pastors as it is an interior authority,
entrusted principally to the Christ and the inward
experience which man can feel by faith in the same
Christ. (P. 407.)
As Raffaele Mariano, so also Prof. Labanca does not
confine himself to the study of the past history and pres
ent life of the Papacy. From the past as well as the pres
ent he makes inductions as to its future. He does not
think a self-reform of the Papacy possible. He holds
that if the Papacy is to be reformed, it must be done by
the action of the clergy, who, in order to bring it about,
ought to be brave enough to fight for it. The transla
tion of a few paragraphs will prove illuminating.
Dealing with the political Papacy, Prof. Labanca
writes : The traditions of the Catholic Church, by which
the Papacy abides, are the very opposite of the
political conquests made by modern science and
civilization. It is desirable, nay, necessary, that
the Papacy cease to be political. The whole polit
ical baggage of the middle ages, which has hitherto
been the equipment of the Papacy, must become
only a memory for the Catholics of Italy as well
as the world. All the denominations and political
76

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
functions of the Church, such as Secretary of
State, Apostolic Nuncios, Ambassadors of the
Holy See, Apostolic Delegates and the other dip
lomatic offices, must disappear. The Church can
very well exercise its spiritual authority through
the Episcopate. The Episcopate must retake its
ancient high mission. Ecclesiastical communica
tions can be made to the bishops, the primitive and
sure organs of the Church. The nuncios and the
ambassadors of the Holy See have been and are
still a cause of many and grievous discords be
tween the Church and the State. (P. 484.)
Prof. Labanca is no less forcible in his consideration
of the future of the religious Papacy.
Let us ask, he says, do all Catholics agree in
holding that the Papacy may endure such as it
actually presents itself ? All, it is true, wish that
it may last forever; but, it is .also true, not all
admit that it can perpetuate itself under the pres
ent form. As soon as the Infallibility was pro
claimed, Catholics separated into two camps, the
"resigned" and the "not resigned" to the dogma.
The latter intend to acknowledge Infallibility in
the unanimous voice of the Church as expressed
in the Councils and the Fathers of the first Chris
tian age. In general they may be said to oppose
the present papal system with a future episcopal
one. As a consequence the pope would be no
longer infallible, nor would he represent an
authority of absolute jurisdiction.
All the attempts during the nineteenth century,
to detach the Papacy from Jesuitism and bring
it near to science and civilization have failed. Who
77

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
shall then call it back to the true principles of the
Gospel, harmonized with the contemporary civil
progress ? Such an aim has been pursued in these
days of ours by some Catholics of Germany,
France, Italy and England, who profess them
selves historians, or biblical critics or Christian
democrats. These Catholics are greatly mistaken ;
for, while the Church obstinately persists in wish
ing to be unreformable, in regard to its dogmas,
they, on the other hand, do not oppose such un-
reformability. They maintain that criticism is
able to adapt Catholicism to the historical, exeget-
ical and democratic progress of contemporary sci
ence and life, abstaining from a thorough discus
sion of several Catholic dogmas. Is there then a
great sagacity needed to see that they are doomed
to failure ? As long as they do not resolve to de
mand with clearness and resoluteness a transfor
mation of dogmas, at least of those regarding the
Catholic hierarchy, as Gunther, Lamennais, Maret,
Gioberti and others did, they will utterly fail to
attain their end. Some of the liberal Catholics
speak of an extrinsic, not intrinsic, mutability of
dogmas. Such a distinction might be made in
regard to christological dogmas ; but it is necessary
to avoid it when the hierarchical dogmas of the
Church are spoken of, for they are extrinsically
as well as intrinsically changeable. They, having
been born for the particular needs of hierarchy,
are changeable in themselves, according to the
times. What cultured Catholic could nowadays
believe any longer the dogmas of the divine or-
78

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
igin of the Papacy and of the Infallibility of the
pope? (P. 449.)
This consideration of the future of the Papacy is fol
lowed by such a ponderous warning as this :
If Catholics wish, as it is natural, that the re
ligious Papacy should live long, it is necessary that
it recommend the Catholic religion not so much
for its dogmas as for the practice of Christian
virtues, itself beginning to set a luminous example
of them. The Catholic Church, more than the
other Christian bodies, has sanctioned a cumulus
of dogmas harmful to the true Christian sentiment,
in order to bring abouta greater luxurianceof noisy
ecclesiastical pomps and ceremonies, a greater
glorification of the mother of Jesus, a greater
credit for miraculous sanctuaries, a greater pro
fusion of indulgencies, a greater increase of papal
authority. All this dogmatic burden, laid on the
conscience of the faithful, is very noxious to the
future of the religious Papacy. I do not say that
the pope should make declarations against dogmas.
It is desirable that he should not create new ones,
and should not attach importance to the old ones,
several of which are sharp contradictions of sci
ence and of no moral efficacy in this historical peri
od of civilization. Pope Pius X manifested the
will of "Instaurare Omnia in Christo." The in
dependent scientists and historians who believe
that Christianity can still concur to ameliorate
the moral and social life of nations, wish — and
so do I — that the Papacy should truly restore
everything in Christ. This restoration implies
three things above all: that the Papacy put off
79

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
its unlimited religious and political authority;
that Catholicism lay aside all that which is
repugnant to the Gospel of Christ; that the pope
act again as the spiritual father of the faithful in
Christ. (P. 469.)
Prof. Labanca ends his scholarly work thus :
Some Catholics, in reading my words, express
ing the mind and wish of many thinkers, both
Italian and foreign, will grow furious and ex
claim : Desiderium Peccatorum Peribit. As an in
dependent historian, not opposed to religion, what
must I say ? Let us not delude ourselves by think
ing that the religious Papacy is soon to end, even
as some critics believe. One needs to be blind
folded not to see that the religious Papacy has
still wide and deep roots. The historian cannot
decline to admit for it a more or less long future,
according to the reforms, more or less serious,
which will be called for by internal as well as ex
ternal forces. As for myself, a free believer, let me
add that a sudden or near death of the old sinner
being not likely, it is to be hoped that it convert it
self, and that its sincere conversion, may influence
the morals and civilization of Catholic peoples.

Speaking of the denunciations of Roman Catholicism
by contemporary Italians we ought not to omit the name
of Leone Caetani, a member of the Chamber of Dep
uties, widely known among the intellectual class of the
capital. His weighty booklet, "La Crisi Morale Dell'ora
Presente"1 (The Moral Crisis of the Present Hour),
"'Leone Caetani. "La crisi morale dell'ora presente: religione,
modernismo e democrazia," Roma, 1911.
80

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
strongly charges Rome with having put herself out of
the current of religious, moral and civil progress of man
kind. He says in part :
The Roman Church has forsaken her ancient
popular traditions; she has ceased to exert that
beneficial reforming influence with which she used
once to stimulate progress and moral improvement
and which was her principal "raison d'etre" in the
early age. . . . Reduced as she is without
vigor or power of adapting and evolving herself,
grown torpid through so many centuries of ex
istence, and already threatened with a deathblow,
she can only repeat theological and ecclesiastical
formulas, old and in sharp contrast with the most
profound moral needs of the present hour.
Commenting on the war waged by Pius X against
modernism, Hon. Caetani says :
The anti-modernism of the pope is not a war
waged against a doctrine or a defense of true re
ligion, but it is a desperate attempt to keep un
shaken papal autocratic power over ecclesiastical
matters and its spiritual dominion over the faith
ful; for the Church of Rome is threatened in her
doctrines and ecclesiastical authority, and every
calm and impartial man can observe on her fore
head the mark of a mortal moral disease, a disease
which is driving her to the madness of suicide ; and
the suicidal madness with which the spirit of the
Vatican is actually possessed, is shown, above
everything else, by the war it has declared on
all the new currents of religious belief.
******* Another thinker who has not spared Roman Catholi-
81

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
cism is Senator Angelo Mosso, one of the greatest con
temporary physiologists and writers of Italy. His book,
"La Democrazia Nella Religione e Nella Scienza: Studi
Sull 'America."1 ("Democracy in Religion and Science:
Studies on America"), is of very great interest for
Americans. It treats of American immigration, social
ism, democracy, intellectual, religious and social fea
tures of modern American life.
Speaking of Italian and American socialists, the author
after having brought forth some points of contact be
tween them, states that one of the chief factors different
iating the Italian working man from the American is
"religious sentiment."
Probably, he writes, Americans will never be
come true socialists, for our Christianity without
God does not please Americans. The atheism of
Italian and European socialism fails to find a
favorable ground in the United States.
Dealing with the problem of education, Sen. Mosso
says that: Education is the principal business of the Ameri
can nation. It is from the universities that tne
people draw the strength of their brains, the force
of their arms, and that active spirit which is neces
sary to the expansion of modern life.
Then he complains that Italian system of pedagogy is
neither liberal nor efficient, and that Italy has not yet
abandoned the old scholastic tradition, to turn to modern
life. The medieval tradition, he writes, and scholas
ticism are still strongly rooted in the teaching of
"Sen. A. Mosso. "La democrazia nella religione e nella scienza."
Milano, Treves, 1906. 82

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
our universities and the influence of Catholicism
(which made the philosophers shortsighted, by
shutting them in the contemplation of the inward
world) still dominates Italian schools. The mod
ern school in Italy still feels the medieval influ
ence of monastical life and the fatal contempt
thrown by Catholicism on the so-called earthly life.
It seems that a book, in order to be recommended
by our teachers, must contain all that is more flac
cid and rancid in the manuals used in Roman
seminaries.
******* In a survey of modern religious thought in Italy we
cannot fail to refer briefly to what has been rightly
called "Modernism." Modernism has not been an ex
clusive Italian movement, for its greatest representatives
are French and English ; yet Italians have brought to it
a precious contribution of intellectual activity and, what
is more, of moral and spiritual energy. In the general
decay of religion in Italy, it may be stated that modern
ism has been the only breath of religious ideal and a
source of hope for a better future of religion among
Italians. Further Italian modernism has derived a pe
culiar importance from the fact that Italy, the seat and
center of papal Catholicism, has been the theater of the
most violent struggle between the old and new Catholic
principle. It would be hard to analyze, within brief limits, such
a complex movement as modernism. The representatives
of it, though agreeing in certain fundamental ideas, have
manifested various tendencies, adopted different methods,
pursued dissimilar aspirations. The modernism of some,
83

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
for instance, the Rev. Gazzola, Father Semeria,1 Bishop
Bonomelli, Father Ghignoni, has been of such a moderate
character as not to exceed the boundaries of ecclesiastical
discipline, practices of worship, political relations of the
Church. Some others, more radical, as Murri, Minocchi,2

"Father Giovanni Semeria, a Barnabite priest, became famous
in Italy, during the latter part of last century, for his scholarship,
his eloquence and, above all, his strong and sincere Christian
convictions. He has published some valuable books, among
which : "Venticinque anni di storia del Cristianesimo nascente,"
Roma, 1900 ; "Primo sangue cristiano," Roma, 1901 ; "Dogma,
gerarchia e culto nella chiesa primitiva," Roma, 1902.
But his works, though remarkable for wealth of scholarship,
are wanting in exegesis free from Papal preconceits. In certain
writings, however, as, for instance, in the "La question synop-
tique" (appeared in the Revue Biblique, Paris, October, 1892),
he is considerably unprejudiced. The tendency of Father Semeria
to apologize in behalf of the Roman hierarchy is more or less
strong in most of his works. Yet not even Father Semeria has
been spared from the calumnies and persecution of the Jesuits,
the ever-active bosses of the Vatican. Under their malignant
influence he was, for a certain period of time, exiled from Rome
and forbidden to preach.
2The Rev. Salvatore Minocchi, formerly professor of Hebrew
at Florence, is one of the greatest contemporary biblical scholars
of Italy, as his studies on the Psalms and Isaiah have attested.
He was the editor of the "Rivista Critica e Storica di Studi
Religiosi," which was first issued in the year 1901, in Florence,
and has had a perilous existence. The review was truly remark
able for its scientific criticism and modern breadth. Professor
Minocchi is a further victim of the Jesuitical hatred and perse
cution. Removed from his teaching chair in a Catholic institute
of Florence and commanded to make a retraction of his views of
the symbolical character of the first chapters of the Genesis, he
boldly answered : "Never, never will I make such a base sur
render of my Catholic conscience to scientific views which I know
to be very false." He was suspended "a divinis" in 1908, and
late, in the same year, he voluntarily withdrew into secular life.
84

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Fracassini,1 have employed their critical spirit and the
rich patrimony of their biblical and historical scholarship
for the elaboration of a new conception of dogmas, tra
ditions, authority of the Church.
The activity of the modernists has not limited itself to
the strictly religious field; while some have been dealing
with biblical criticism, ecclesiastical history and theology,
others have occupied themselves with social questions and
pursued the generous dream of a moral reform of society.
Yet, amidst such a disparity of tendencies and criteria,
the aim has been one : to adapt Roman Catholicism to the
thought and life of the modern world, harmonize relig
ious truth with the spirit of the times, renew the medi
eval religion of the Church in such wise that it may have
power to reach the world in which we live and transform
it. Of the principles of the new liberal Catholicism one
may be pointed to as fundamental, that of religious evo
lution. Religious truth does not escape the great law of
development. According to the moderate evolutionists
within the Roman Church, the dogmas and institutions
of the Church are divinely pre-f ormed ; and their histor
ical development is nothing else but an explication of the
same dogmas and institutions which are already, in a
specific manner, within the bosom of primitive Christian
ity. Modernists hold, on the contrary, that the dogmas
and institutions of the Church are the result of a more
vital and creative evolution of Christian conscience.
Against the mechanical and unscientific papal theory of

"Mgr. Umberto Fracasini, Rector of the Grand Seminary of
Perugia and one of the foremost advisers of the Pontifical
Biblical Commission, was deprived of these two offices, by order
of Pius X, on the ground of Modernism. 85

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
development, which consists in nothing more than a
gradual unfolding of the original deposit of faith, mod
ernists maintain a more dynamic and true development,
analogous to that of the organic evolution in the natural
order, according to which internal and external factors
co-operate to develop the life which was specifically pre
determined in the germ.
From this principle it follows that dogmas are not to
be regarded as static formulas of truth; but rather as
successive developments of the conscious life of the
Church. They are genuine expressions of Christian life
in a certain stage of its perpetual development. They
are historical interpretations of that faith which is in
cessantly elaborated, under new forms, by Christian life.
The creeds are not the truth itself of the Gospel; but
only the symbolical form which the truth takes in order
to preserve and perpetuate itself.
Modernists, accordingly, maintain that throughout the
various periods of history there has been and ever shall
be a changing realization by the Christian conscience of
the truth of the Gospel. "Theology," says one of them,
"has varied from age to age, and can and must change
also in our time, assimilating its culture, if Christianity
still wishes to satisfy the spiritual exigencies of our time."
The doctrines, worship, institutions of the Church may,
nay, must be reformed by the same principles from which
they have been developed. The Church must be ready
to restate her creeds, that they may be the real expres
sion of the self-renewing Christian life.
The pope, who, in order to uphold his theory that
Roman Catholicism as it stands today is the immediate,
though implicit, creation of Christ Himself, refuses to
86

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
acknowledge the methods and results of scientific truth
is by the modernists addressed thus :
You have preferred the men of syllogism to the
men of deep knowledge, as though the salvation
of the Church lay not in the objective establishment
of historical truth, but in maintaining intact tra
ditions which are void of meaning and founda
tion."
It is clear enough that modernists, through the prin
ciple of vital development of the Church and its truths
and institutions, have not repudiated the reality and ne
cessity of dogma ; they have only substituted for its static
conception an evolutionary one. Thus they have both
saved the integrity and historical continuity of Christian
life within the Church and secured its adaptability to the
changing experiences and exigencies of souls, throughout
history. These modernists, the great and noble elaborators of
such a constructive and admirable system of Christianity,
have never disavowed the authoritative function of the
Church. It is true that they have been denounced as
rebels to authority; but rebels they were not. In the
above mentioned letter to the pope, they affirm unmis
takably that: As Christians we accept the authority of the
Church as the careful dispenser of eternal truth
inherited from Christ, to regulate and govern our
religious life and to interpret and supply the liv
ing needs and exigencies of it.
What modernists strongly disavow is an absolute, un
conditional, blind submission of Christian conscience to

"See "Che cosa vogliamo" (What we want), an open letter to
Pius X by a group of Italian priests. 87

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
the authority of the Church. They cannot accept as
genuine authority an absolutism which silences the voice
of the collective conscience of the Church and crushes
the vitality of the inward Christian experience. They
cherish the idea of setting, above the papal absolutism, a
higher tribunal, the collective conscience of the universal
Church, and substituting for Roman imperialism Chris
tian Catholicism.
There is none who can fail to realize the renovating
energy which the modernistic system carries with itself.
It is the elaboration of a new synthesis of Christianity.
The fundamental canon of modernism is not to repudi
ate the traditional element of Christianity, but to har
monize it with the actual experience of souls. It is a
new attempt to free Catholic doctrines and institutions
from their medieval forms and carry them into modern
life. Modernism has embraced, within its vast idea of reno
vation, not only dogmas, worship and institutions, but
ritual, practices, discipline, briefly all the elements of
Christian system. Of all this modernism has rejected
nothing; it has only wished its modernization. Thus, for
instance, while deeply appreciating the power and beauty
of Catholic symbolism, modernists have also realized the
necessity of freeing worship from excessive formalism
and restore it to a more primitive simplicity. They have
raised the cry for a more spiritual worship, a worship
which should help and support, not constitute or sub
stitute the inner life of faith. They have employed their
historical and critical spirit to put to flight a vast amount
of legends of saints, pious fables concerning shrines,
miraculous efficacy of relics ; they have declared war on
superstition in all of its forms. They have also denounced
88

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
the countless forms of popular devotions as lessening the
power of faith. They have pleaded for a democratization
of papal absolutistic government, a reform of the medi
eval ecclesiastical system of education, a more active par
ticipation of the laity in the government of the Church,
a removal of abuses and scandals from the bosom of the
Church, a moderation of enforced celibacy; briefly they
have advocated a renovation of the Church in all the
spheres of its life.
The rise of this new religious thought within the
Roman Church is easy to be told. The modernistic doc
trines, which have not been, as yet, fully elaborated and
systematized, are closely connected with the develop
ments of biblical and historical criticism. As the results
of the New Criticism widened and became more evident,
the deficiencies of the medieval theology were also more
fully realized, and the need grew of a new theology which
should welcome and assimilate the precious contributions
of the new critical studies. Within a few years the new
theological tendencies became strongly marked in the
Roman religious world. Italian priests who, because of
their closest contact with the Papacy, felt more deeply the
grip of papal system, could not fail to play an important
part in the struggle between the old and new Catholi
cism. Having fully acquainted themselves with the re
sults of modern historical and critical knowledge, with
their souls inspired by the ideal of true Christian life,
they came into the field, and began to deal mortal blows
to the scholastic system. The early modernistic activity
in Italy was almost prodigious. Meetings were held to
discuss and further the new doctrines; reviews were
published in order to explain and spread the new thought ;
scholarly books followed one after the other; a new re-
89

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ligious literature arose. Even the columns of political
daily papers, as, for instance, "II Corriere Della Sera,"
of Milano, took a passionate interest in the new ideas.
The movement swept over the peninsula as an un-
restrainable tide. A great part of the young priests were
won over to it; a great many among the most scholarly
professors in the seminaries approached, more or less
closely, to the new ideas and became, in their turn, cen
tripetal powers. Even among the hierarchical spheres mod
ernism found sympathizers and active supporters. The
Vatican, which seemed at first to have failed to realize
the vitality and extent of the movement, became at once
alarmed, and a violent reaction was organized by the
Jesuits. The new doctrines were utterly misinterpreted
and condemned. Their champions were calumniated as
agnostic, atheists, anarchists, and, accordingly, fiercely
persecuted. Espionage, removal of teachers from col
leges, excommunication, even exile, briefly the most
drastic measures were taken to destroy every trace of
modernism. The resistance of Italian modernists to the strokes of
authority did not break down easily. In the year 1907 a
detailed reply to the condemnatory papal encyclical "Pas-
cendi Dominici Gregis" was published in Rome, under
the title "II Programma dei Modernisti," strongly main
taining the absolute necessity of a new Christian apolo
getic, as a consequence of the undeniable results of his
torical criticism. In 1908, in spite of the obstinate ef
forts of ecclesiastical authorities to suppress modernist
literature and the excommunication launched against the
most prominent champions of the new doctrines, the re
view, "Nova et Vetera," was founded. In the same year
90

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
the "Lettere di un Prete Modernista" was published, with
theological views of a decidedly negative character.
The stormy persecution of the Vatican was met with
a real Christian courage by the modern Catholics, who
played a noble part in the unchristian struggle. Con
vinced that they could assault Roman Catholicism bet
ter from within than from without, modernists have
usually adopted the policy of avoiding conflict with the
authority. Yet, when the yielding to authority implied
a base, scandalous surrender of the enlightened con
science, some of them, though unwillingly, have rebelled.
In the struggle against modernism the Vatican thought
itself to be the winner ; but it was the real loser. By his
repudiation of modernism Pius X did Rome an irrepar
able damage, which has reverberated throughout the
whole world. The intellectual and social influence of
Roman Catholicism, which had been decidedly on the
decline, since the middle of the nineteenth century, has,
within the last decade, been immeasurably weakened.
The period of acute crisis is over these many years,
and modernism is living today its normal life. It is con
tinuing its work silently in the conscience of the Church.
There are many who seem to think that modernism has
been definitely crushed by the tremendous power of the
official Church; but they are greatly mistaken. That
great fire is not, cannot be, extinguished. There is in it
the light of truth and the warmth of life; the forces of
darkness and death cannot prevail over it. What is dead
is the radical modernism, the modernism of those who
nourished themselves with German rationalistic theology
and issued the unhappy "Programma." It is dead, the
modernism which went out of the Church, and became
a branch of liberal Protestantism or of free thought.
91

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Such modernism was bound to die, for it was, in its
fundamental part, destructive of Christianity. Its ra
tionalistic tendency stagnated and killed it.
But the modernism which kept iself within the Church,
though it seemed to go underground, did not perish al
together. This is evidenced by the fact that a new mod
ernism has more recently risen in Italy, which has al
ready won a great part of the young clergy and is grad
ually spreading even amongst the rural priesthood. In
the year 1911 it issued its program. Here are some
statements concerning the reform which the new Cath
olics intend to accomplish:
We want, they say, the revision of dogma, the
revision of all our confessions of faith ; we want
that which is substantial in Christianity to be
separated from that which has been added later,
in the interest of the sacerdotal caste.
We want the authority of the pope to be re
duced to its just limits, and the episcopacy and
the laity to be reinstated to their ancient author
ity, rights and freedom.
We want all believers to enjoy the right of free
research in all the fields recognized as legitimate.
We do not want the abolition of the hierarchy; but
we want all its grades, from the lowest to the high
est to be represented not by men of intrigue, am
bition and cunning, but by men prompted by
apostolic spirit. . . . Among the rights to be
given back to the clergy we want celibacy to be
voluntary, not compulsory. If it is true that mat
rimony is a sacrament for the laymen, we want it
to be the same even for the priests. In regard
to worship, we wish it to be brought back to its
92

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ancient simplicity and purity. We want the abo
lition of Latin language in the liturgy; the aboli
tion of all those fables and idols, which, besides
lacking justification in any true and sure tradition,
are very often disproved by sound criticism as
historically inexistent. We want the veneration
due to the great saints of the Church not to re
place the worship due to God alone ; and we want
this worship, which at present is so material, to
become again the worship in spirit and truth.
. . . We want the abolition of all false devo
tional practices; and, as a substitute for all the
sickly sentimental books of prayers and pious
meditations, we desire the Gospel of Christ, the
greatest book that Christianity possesses, the only
book capable of bringing up the spirit in a true
and manly piety. In conclusion we ask: from
whom shall we expect all these and the many other
reforms which our Christian conscience demands?
It is almost vain to expect them from such as are
in high places. . . . We believe that the
power of reform rests in the people. When Chris
tian conscience awakens within the masses, the
day of the reform of the Church will not be far
off.1
Such a sound, constructive, practical program as this
bears in its bosom the germs of a long and prosperous
life. The goal of the new Catholics is restoration in the
truest sense of the word; their efforts cannot fail to be
crowned with success. They will succeed if they are
loyal to their purposes. What the new Catholics need
"Gennaro Avolio. "La Riforma Religiosa." Battaglie d'oggi,
Napoli, April, 1911. 93

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
above all is moderation. They should seek light and
counsel in the primitive Catholicism of the Anglican
Church and not in the liberal or rationalistic Protestant
ism of Germany, now hopelessly discredited by war. They
ought to repel the temptation of rationalism, for radical
tendencies cannot help ultimately proving negative and
destructive. The relentless individualism and the con
sequent intellectual and spiritual anarchy, which are at
the bottom of modern liberal Protestantism, can never
become the basis for a reform of Roman Catholicism.
To renounce the threefold fundamental principle of
Catholicism, namely, the hierarchical, dogmatic, and tra
ditional, would be not to reform, but to revolutionize;
not to construct, but to destroy.
Besides moderation of views, modernists need a great
deal of prudence and patience in their conduct. They
ought to avoid premature partial outbreaks, which the
ecclesiastical authorities can easily repress; persevere in
their work of infiltration and penetration; win the con
fidence of the intelligent part of the laity, and thus pre
pare the Church for the supreme clash against the fortress
of a system so well organized and so deeply rooted in
the past. The future of the new Catholicism shines with
the light of victory, but the way to triumph is war, waged
with courage, strategy and perseverance.
The vitality of Italian modernism is also attested by
the flourishing "Christian Democratic League," which,
besides keeping afire the new religious ideals, is display
ing a considerable activity in that country. The fol
lowing program was put forth a few months ago (July,
1917) by that League:
We believe in the Church's authority as willed
by God, and we loyally accept it. It represents
94

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
a force and a bond without which society could
not exist, and we are proud to acknowledge all
the good this authority has done to the world. But
we hope and work so that the Church may come
to fulfill her great mission by such means as are
in accordance with the democratic regime in which
we live. By saying that we want a democratic
Catholicism we only ask for a Catholicism that
may call itself truly Christian.
The group of Christian Democrats has a representation
also in the Parliament. One of the most intelligent lead
ers is Hon. Ciriani, whose speech as to the participation
of the pope in a future peace congress was a strong de
nunciation of the secret aims of the Vatican to regain
political and territorial advantages.
If the Church wants to obtain a larger influ
ence on the world's history, he said, she must do
it through those means which no earthly power
can take from her, through the holiness, the self-
giving activity, the martyrdom of her sons, and
by living our modern life in truth, the essence of
which is democracy.
The close of his speech was still more offensive to the
Vatican. Were it possible for us, he continued, to see
the head of the Catholic Church as the father of
all Christians, as the upholder of the highest prin
ciples of justice and right, our opposition would be
baseless. But then the Holy See ought to have
declared herself impartial rather than neutral ; she
should have used all the spiritual weapons to con
demn those nations which, while calling themselves
95

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Christian, have sinned against the very ideals
which religion stands for.
******* It would be difficult to relate the history of all the
Italian champions of modernism, for each one of them
has had his own story and tragedy. Such histories,
except some particulars, are, on the whole, always the
same: A long preparation of severe historical and bib
lical studies and a consequent realization of the inade
quacy of the old Catholicism to supply the needs of mod
ern souls; seeking a more efficient Christianity in a new
Catholic system wherein the experience of the past and
the actual life should melt in one ; a complete dedication
of oneself to the realization of the new ideal of synthesis
and renovation; the condemnation of the Church which
does not and which will not understand that ideal; the
just protest, ending often in rebellion, of the new Catho
lic conscience against the abandonment and betrayal of
truth; bearing with Christian fortitude the cruel blows
of authority — here are the main characteristics common
to the story of almost every one of Italian modernists.
One of the most active among the champions of the
new religious ideals in Italy has been the Rev. Romolo
Murri, of the diocese of Fermo, in central Italy, a scholar
absorbed in historical and biblical research, but also
moved by the problems of social and political life. He
is a veritable apostle of democracy, a man who would
bring into Roman Catholicism a stream of free spirit,
bring religion nearer to the soul of the people, and thus
renew their moral and social life. He says :
We wish a Christianity more pure, more intense,
more practical, more Christian, more resembling
its original, more consonant with the Gospel.
96

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
He laments the lack of real religion in Italy, and he
describes it as the cause of the lack of moral energy,
which is evident both in the individual and social life.
As all other modernists, he believes in Catholicism and
deplores its deformation by the Roman Church. He says
that the reason why many Catholics hate Catholicism is
because they do not understand it ; and they do not under
stand it because it is being misrepresented to them.
In the second volume of his "Battaglie d'oggi," Murri
deeply deplores the disproportion between ecclesiastical
and modern culture in Italy and assails the methods of
religious teachings in Roman Catholic Seminaries.
How many, he asks, of our clergymen who rep
resent the average of culture know anything about
the conquests of modern thought during the past
eighty years, or about those concerns of positive
criticism which are both the torment and the glory
of modern research in all branches of knowledge?
How many know even the names of several new
branches of science? In the philosophical and
theological field the study of the internal history
of the various branches which are taught, of the
development of doctrine and its relation to the
history of culture is entirely neglected. Every
thing proceeds as in past times. Through the
hands of our young students still circulate volumi
nous treatises on dogma, in which, because of the
absolute defect of any critical subsidy and his
torical criterion, there is not to be found one single
argument scientifically deduced from Scriptures
or the Fathers. Expert theologians will feel
embarrassed in hearing discussions about the
history of dogma, Babylonian myths reflected in
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Protestantism and the Latin Soul
the Bible, Hellenistic penetrations into Saint John's
Gospel, or in seeing the history of the Jewish peo
ple considered as a document of barbarous times
and manners, and that of the Church expounded
through historical materialism.
Then he proceeds to show the social inefficiency of
such Roman Catholic culture.
How can we pretend, he writes, that such a
clergy can exert a wide influence upon the society
in which they live ? It is true that all that which
represents the substance of religion, dogma,
morals, worship and the like is ancient and peren
nial. Yet new and grievous questions constantly
arise apropos of dogma, morals, rite and all that
concerns the life of Catholicism and the manner
of understanding, explaining and harmonizing it
with the desires of the souls who seek faith and
with the results of contemporary studies. Catholi
cism lives in the midst of humanity; it lives in
minds and souls who advance and progress every
day, and it possesses an admirable power of adap
tation and assimilation. It constantly creates and
moulds new forms of action for the times; it col
lects and segregates; it takes from the other sci
ences what it needs in order to explain the divine
and make it acceptable; it tries to penetrate the
other branches of knowledge, especially philosophy
and law, in order to impress upon them directions
in accord with its own principles. All this exacts,
on the part of the Catholic students, peculiar
activity and prerogatives both of mind and
patience. Yet this work of internal progress in theology,
98

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
adapted to the external progress of human sci
ences, has been, and is still, zero in Italy. Enter
one of our Theological Schools and you will feel
yourself in "settecento," and perhaps you will dis
cover that they have gone still further back, have
left beyond even the positive dogmatics of Peta
vius and the metaphysics of Suarez and have
returned to Cajetan.
In the masterful conference "Catholicism and Life"1
Don Murri laments the divorce between the Catholic
religion and the movements of modern thought and con
science, maintains that the clergy are not a caste, but
historically and intimately bound to the social life and,
accordingly, they must live this life if they wish to redeem
it. Unless the clergy convert themselves to science and
are reconciled with life, they will lose their influence over
the popular masses, even as they have already lost it over
the educated classes. Catholics, both of the clergy and
laity, are warmly besought to seek in the Gospel and in
Jesus Christ the spirit of the new age. Short excerpts
from Murri's epoch-making conference will reveal to us
the fervor of religious ideality which inflames his soul.
Speaking of the necessity of culture for the clergy,
he says : There is a thing in which we all are wanting:
the art of securing rich harvest by rational meth
ods of fertilizing the soil, the art of patient trans
formation, to make good for the defective spon
taneity of the ground. Friends, if we are sick,
our sickness is not in the will, but in our intelli
gence ; if we are wanting something, it is not the
consciousness of the goal which we seek, but the
""Battaglie d'oggi," Vol IV. 99

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
knowledge of the means of how to attain it; if
there is a peculiar initiative which ought to be at
heart in all Italians and with which all ought to
concur, it is a wide, vigorous and efficacious propa
ganda "pro cultura." The bridegroom is on the
way: let us replenish our lamps. From the inac
cessible springs of thought, from the unexplored
or neglected sources of positive science and Chris
tian wisdom let us derive through the thousands
of rivulets, the waters of knowledge to fecund
every clod, to enlighten every lonely corner of
our villages, to move the humble loom which
weaves the cloth of our country, and to bring our
word to every waiting soul and every suffering
man. Here is life, here renaissance and salva
tion. Our initiative, he goes on, cannot be strictly
religious, nor literary, nor political, nor eco
nomical, nor municipal. Let us acknowledge the
intimacy of religious thought ; let us acknowledge,
more especially, the manifest complexity of life.
There is burning today, within the breasts of the
young Catholics, a lively and restless desire of
being men of our time, of suffering and loving
with it, in order to communicate to it our anxi
eties and deep love of God and His Church, and
to baptize and save democracy through such love.
Let such desire be our counsellor and guide: let
us confidently abandon ourselves to it: Amate »t
Facite Quod Vultis. . .
He ends thus :
The greatness of our vocation lies in this, that
we must create, slowly and laboriously, a new
100

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Italy, bringing again Catholicism into the life of
the Italy of today and of the proletary which is
steadily arising. We must permeate with Catholi
cism the whole Italian public life and transfuse it
into the veins of the proletary and democracy.
None, perhaps, among the liberal Catholics has worked,
fought, suffered more than Don Romolo Murri for the
triumph of the new Catholicism. He has been the organ
izer and discipliner of the forces of modernism in Italy ;
and, consequently, he has been a veritable victim of the
most atrocious persecution on the part of the Vatican.
Because of his propaganda, in 1906 he was suspended
"a divinis" ; a thing, however, which did not prevent him
from being elected deputy to the Italian Chamber. Not
long afterwards the unbearable course of ecclesiastical
authorities compelled him to sever his connection with
the clerical order and he withdrew into secular life.
Among the intellectual productions of the modern Italian
Catholics there is nothing to be compared to Murri's three vol
umes "Le Battaglie d'oggi"" (The Battles of today), a work
overflowing with faith and science, and throwing dazzling light
upon the most tremendous problems of modern Christian life.
Among the other productions of his religious genius we notice:
Psicologia della Religione, Roma, 1905; "Democrazia e Cristian
esimo," "La Vita Religiosa nei Cristianesimo," 1907; "Delia Reli
gione, della Chiesa e dello Stato," Milano, 1910 ; "La Bibbia nella
storia d'ltalia," Firenze, 1904; "Un Papa, un Secolo e il Cattoli-
cesimo Sociale," Torino, 1904.
Among the other influential leaders of the modernistic move
ment in Italy we cannot fail to cite with reverence the names of
Giovanni Semeria, Salvatore Minocchi and Umberto Fracassini.
******* Among the laity, Antonio Fogazzaro2 has put his liter-

'Romo Murri, "Le battaglie di oggi," Roma, 1901.
'Antonio Fogazzaro (1842-1911) is a world-famous name. His
101

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ary genius to the service of the Christian Democratic
action. Genuine Catholic spirit as he was, he had a deep
realization of the necessity of a larger and freer inter
pretation of the doctrinal formularies within Roman
Catholicism. He expressed his views in his novel "II
Santo," wherein Benedetto, in his interview with the
pope, pleads for a reformation of the Church. He says
to the pope: Holy Father, the Church is sick. Four wickeo
spirits have entered its body to fight against the
Holy Ghost. One of these is the spirit of false
hood. There are many who call themselves faith
ful and yet do not understand how deficient and

novels, poems and conferences placed him among the greatest
literary geniuses of Italy, during the second half of the last cen
tury. Among his novels excel : "Piccolo mondo antico" ; "Piccolo
Mondo Moderno" ; "Daniele Cortis" ; "Malombra" ; "II Mistero
del Pocta." The highest religious, ethical and esthetic ideals
prompt his writings : "Ascensioni Umane" ; "II Dolore nell'Arte" ;
"Per la Bellezza di un'Idea"; "L'Origine dell'Uomo e il Senti-
mento Religioso" ; Sant 'Agostino e Darwin" ; "Discorsi." (Edi
tors : Baldini, Castoldi e C. Milano.)
The religious genius of Fogazzaro was as great as the literary.
In his novel "II Santo (Milano, 1906) he launched a program of
ecclesiastical reform, having for its object a general renewal of
Christian life. The book, which attracted the attention of the
whole religious world, was put to the "Index" by Pius X.
Fogazzaro was a pupil of Abate Zanella, one of the few mod
ern Italian poets whose productions are prompted by a genuine
religious spirit. The essential object at which Fogazzaro's lit
erary genius aims is a struggle on the part of spirit to free itself
from matter and lift itself up to the height of spiritual ideals. In
his earlier stage he is led by love as though the purifying and
redeeming flame of the soul. But in his later works he looks for
salvation no longer to the influence of womanhood, but to the
divine power of religious faith. 102

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
cowardly their faith is and how much the spirit
of the Apostle, scrutinizing all things, is foreign
to themselves. Worshippers of the letter, they
wish to compel the adults to feed themselves upon
a food for children, which they refuse. They do
not understand that if God is infinite and un
changeable, yet man forms of Him an idea ever
greater and greater from century to century, and
the same may be said of the whole of divine Truth.
Today few Christians realize that religion is not
merely an adhesion of the intellect to formulas of
truth, but that it is, above all, action and life, ac
cording to such truth: and those who do realize
this, those who have the supreme worship of God-
Truth and turn with an intrepid faith to Christ,
to the Church and the Truth, are bitterly fought,
defamed as heretics, compelled to silence. . . .
Do not let, Father, external devotions, which are
already enough, to multiply; rather recommend
to the pastors the practice and teaching of internal
prayer, which cures the soul even as some super
stitions corrupt it.
The second evil spirit which infests the Church
is the domination of the clergy. Those priests
who have the spirit of power are not willing that
souls should communicate directly and normally
with God, to ask of Him advice and direction.
The priests wish to direct the souls themselves, as
mediators, and the souls grow weak and timid.
The malefic spirit of domination has suppressed
the ancient holy Catholic freedom. It would like
to impose submissions which are not obligatory
and retractations against conscience. It tends to
103

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
carry religious authority even outside the religious
field. Another evil spirit is that of immobility. The
Catholics, dominated by such spirit, believe to
please God, as the zealous Jews, who had Jesus
crucified. All the clericals who today oppose pro
gressive Catholicism would have had Jesus cruci
fied in the name of Moses. They are idolatrous
of the past: they would like to keep everything,
even the most foolish traditions, unchanged within
the Church.
In another discourse Benedetto says:
The Catholic Church, which proclaims itself the
fountain of truth, opposes today the search for
truth when it is carried on its own foundations,
on the Holy Books, on the dogmas, on its asserted
infallibility. To us this means that the Church
has no longer faith in itself. The Catholic Church
which proclaims itself the minister of life, today
shackles and stifles whatever lives youthfully
within it, and it props itself on all its decadent
and antiquated usages.
Fogazzaro is an evolutionist. He believes in the evo
lution of the natural as well as historical and religious
world. He knows that the rise and growth of all insti
tutions, even religious ones, are inevitably followed by
their decay. Yet he does not despair of the future of
Catholicism. "I spoke," says the Saint, "of the eternal
vitality of Catholic doctrine, of the power which the soul
of Catholic doctrine possesses, to continually transform
its own body, increasing its strength and beauty unlimit-
edly." Fogazzaro conceives Catholicism as containing,
underneath those doctrines and practices which he calls
104

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
"ossified organisms," a final deposit of truth which can
not be destroyed, a reservoir of energies which cannot
be dispersed.
"The Saint," which was put, by the influence of the
Jesuits, upon the Index, was accepted by the Christian
Democrats of Italy as their Gospel. Unfortunately the
author himself, obsequious of ecclesiastical authority, re
tracted it: yet all sincere souls, within the Roman com
munion, know too well that the charges and complains
of Benedetto are but too true.
*******

105

CHAPTER III.
THE CONSONANCE OF PROTESTANTISM WITH THE GERMAN
SOUL.
The preceding chapters have acquainted us with the
existence of a modern anti-papal tradition in Italy, which
is even stronger than the medieval one. The realization
of the doctrinal and practical corruption of the papal
Church, on the part of Italians, has never been so deep
as in modern times.
Yet, in spite of this fact, Protestantism, the rival of
Catholicism, has not made any substantial progress
among the Latin peoples in recent times, and its hopes to
reach them are today less bright than ever.
We have hinted at the various political, social and
moral causes which prevented Protestantism from con
quering the Latin world during the period of the Re
formation. Such causes exist no longer nowadays: and
yet Protestant failure to influence seriously the modern
Latin soul is evident to all. What does that mean? It
means that there must be permanent causes which pre
vent Protestism from reaching the Latin soul. Indeed
there are profound reasons why it fails to be acceptable
to the Latin peoples. Such reasons lie deep in the dis
cordance between the nature of the Protestant religion
and the Latin spirit, as well as in the objective deficien
cies of the religious conception of Luther and Calvin.
It is an undeniable fact that among the various races
of the great human family, according as their aptitude
to receive general ideas exists, their perception of art,
literature, philosophy as well as religion varies. Deter-
107

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
mining forces in the formation of a religious system are
the psychological structure of the race and the social
ambient in the midst of which such formation takes
place. The development of the religious character fol
lows closely that of the characters of tribes and races.
Knowledge, art, literature, music, moral ideals, law, and
even politics influence considerably both creed and cult.
It may be safely said that every religious system is, in- a
great part, the result of the summing up of the various
factors of a race within a certain ambient; in such wise
that it is not so much man who adapts himself to the re
ligion as religion that adapts itself to the man. Some
what analogously, man is, to a great extent, but the
product of his own education.
In fact looking at the various religious systems of the
world, we find that religious manifestations are entirely
consonant with the natural dispositions and manners of
the peoples to which such manifestations appear. Glance,
for instance, at the religious systems of the ancient East
ern peoples, of Greece, Rome, and of Islam. The em
phasis on the future life by the Egyptians, the power and
inscrutability of the divine among Babylonians, the duty
of co-operation with Ahura-Mazda for the improvement
of the world among the Persians, stress on the moral
providence of Tien among the Chinese, briefly all the
distinctive characters of the various religions were im
parted by the psychological heredities and environments
of the peoples among whom such religions took shape.
Thus, again, if we take into consideration the psycho
logical elements peculiar to the ancient Indians, as well
as their social and political system, we will come to the
conclusion that Brahminism could not help assuming the
features which it took, as the multiplicity of forms of
108

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
worship, the complication and minuteness of rites with
a superstitious trust in them, and the divisions of castes
and the like.
We realize the same if we turn to Greece. Embodi
ment of the divine in beautiful forms and ennoblement
of it by the reflexion of philosophical science: here is
the essence of the religion of the Greeks. Such a re
ligious conception is in perfect consistency with Greek
genius. The character of the Greeks was diverse, in a
great many respects, from that of all other ancient peo
ples. A fancy, luminous and harmonious, an intelligence,
quick, acute and balanced, a delicacy and depth of senti
ment were the gifts of the Hellenic peoples. It is just
such extraordinary power of thought, such disposition
open to all the aspects of beauty that brought about the
transformation of ancient religion.
Greek people raised themselves to a higher and nobler
conception of divinity and to a marvelously refined moral
and religious sentiment. They set, at the same time,
their myths in an attractive order, by creating around
them high poetical tales. They gave their gods, more
over, forms well defined and similar to the human, and
made out of each of them a very perfect model at which
they fixedly looked and to which they resolutely endeav
ored to conform. Thus through the Greek fancy the
ancient and rougher natural gods and goddesses were
transformed into ideal types of beauty, knowledge, wis
dom, prudence, activity, foresight, courage, artistic gen
ius, strength, power and art of government, in brief, into
the types of all the prerogatives and virtues which con
stitute the physical and intellectual perfection of man.
In this manner were born Apollo, Hermes, Athena,
Venus Aphrodite, Demetra, and Dyonisius.
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Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Likewise, the religion of the Romans was in full agree
ment with their temper and peculiar qualities of mind.
Roman religion had exactly the same source as the
Greek : yet there is, between them, a profound difference.
The essential elements of the Roman religious system
were the control of it by hierarchical orders and har
monization of religion to the needs of the State. The
reason for it is not to be found elsewhere than in the
unlikeness of the two peoples.
Romans were not endowed with an artistic nature.
Their fancy did not rise to represent the gods under
such perfect and elegant forms as that of the Greeks.
The Romans were strong and simple-mannered people.
Devoted to their gods, their family and their State, they
entirely gave themselves to the welfare of their fireside
and their country. They were, moreover, gifted with a
practical and disciplinary spirit, which was wanting in
the Greeks, a more ingenious, but also a lighter and more
volatile people. It was such dispositions that enabled the
Romans first to unify Italian tribes, and then to conquer
the world and establish the greatest and most durable
empire of ancient times.
Roman religion resembled the people, the most wise,
orderly and strong in the world. There was nothing in
Rome so complex, nothing better regulated and more
profoundly respected than the practices of worship. The
home education and faith in the fatherland being the
foundation of Roman patriotism, the religion of the fire
side and of country became supreme. After Jupiter,
none was more warmly worshipped than Juno, the pro
tectress of mothers, and Vesta, the goddess of the hearth.
Among the household gods the Penates were intensely
110

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
venerated. Then, together with Quirinus, Mars, Min
erva, there were moral goddesses as Virtus, Fides, etc.
Turning then to Mohammedanism, we find that Ma-
hommed was not the originator, but, to a great extent,
himself the product of the religious ideals of his people.
If one takes into due account the psychological structure
of the Arabians, their warm soul, ardent imagination,
vivacity, and exuberance of religious sentiment, he will
easily understand the reasonableness of many features
in the Mohammedan religious system; as, for instance,
the absolute faith in and submission to Allah, the blind
devotion to his service, the religious rigor, intolerant
even of culture, for the Koran, "the perfect law of God,"
must suffice to the believer and absorb all his concerns.
Thus, again, the principles of equality and justice pro
claimed by the Koran were but a reaction against the
miserable oppression of the peoples by tyrants. Those
renewing principles, combined with natural enthusiasm,
explain to us how the poor, wild nomads, burning with a
new faith in Allah, threw themselves upon the neighbor
ing Greek Empire, weakened by internal dissensions and
defended only by mercenaries, and shattered it.
Yet again, to understand the practice of polygamy
among Mohammedans, the natural effeminacy and sensu
ality of Eastern races must be kept in remembrance.
******* Now let us look at the Christian religion itself.
Christianity, though based on the same principles, took
in the East a form conspicuously different from that in
the West. The Eastern church rightly claims to be the
inheritor of the church of the Greek fathers, and, con
sequently, the most ancient and venerable portion of
Catholic Christendom. Yet what a difference between
in

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
the Greek and Roman churches, though both are Catho
lic! It is a quite different type of Catholicity. The
Eastern church differs from the Western not merely
in respect of this or of that doctrine, but in her whole
tenor of life, her spirit, and atmosphere. It is Catho
licity elaborated by Eastern race, a race utterly unlike
the Western one in psychology, tradition, and civilization.
The same great creeds were acknowledged in Greek
and Latin Christendom; still, Greek theology presents a
measurable contrast with the Latin. It assumed a de
cidedly more spiritual and mystical form. It accentuated
in the Divine Incarnation the thought of the intimate
connection between God and man. The Greek standpoint
was pre-eminently interior, contemplative and ascetic;
whereas the Latin was essentially moral, legal, and gov
ernmental. The philosophy by which the Eastern church
was distinguished was transcendental : a character which
may be seen, more distinctly than elsewhere, in the fath
ers of the Alexandrian school, Athenagoras, Origen,
Clement of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria and Atha
nasius. In the Latin domain, on the contrary, the conception
of the divine "rulership" was most peculiarly empha
sized. The scholarly Bishop Gore makes a telling rr-
mark on the subject:
Compare, he says, the Roman Leo's view of
the truth with that of Athanasius, and the con
trast is marked. Both Eastern and Western in
sist equally on the truth of the Church's dogma,
but to the Eastern it is a guide to the knowledge
of God, to the Western it is the instrument to
subdue and discipline the souls of men.1
""Roman Catholic Claims," 1889, Rivingtons, London.
112

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
The theology of both had the doctrines of priestly
mediation and sacramental efficacy; but it was reserved
to the Latin genius to elaborate them and embody them
in the most thorough hierarchical and sacramental sys
tem. When Greek theology had already long since run
its course, and for more than five centuries had come
practically to a standstill, the medieval Schoolmen, An
selm, Peter Lombard, Alexander of Hales, Albertus
Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus,
Suarez, Bellarmin, Petavius and others were working out
the most consummate expression of the mediatory and
sacramental ideas.
We know Greek Catholicism by the name of "Ortho
doxy," that is, the church of sound Catholic doctrine.
And rightly; for the Greek and Eastern church, more
than any other, developed the doctrinal side of the Chris
tian religion. This speculative development of the Greek
Church had its determining reason in Greek mentality and
tradition. Greece had been the mother of philosophy. She had
given the world Socrates, Plato and Aristotle — the
authors of the deepest philosophico-moral systems of
ancient times. The Greek Church inherited the glory of
their splendid traditions and thereby she was enabled to
become the mother of theology, which is but a religious
philosophy. In the Greek fathers was transfused a great
deal of the acumen, subtilty and versality of the great
thinkers of Greece's past. Then, when paganism set
itself to attack the new Christian doctrine by means of
the Greek philosophical culture, the fathers made use of
their mental gifts and their knowledge of the pagan cul
ture to defend Christianity, explaining it and showing
its inherent superiority over the theories of paganism.
113

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
The same talent they employed when there arose the
need of refuting the fierce heresies which troubled the
church during the fourth and fifth centuries.
So the Greek-Eastern Church with her main centers
of culture at Antioch and Alexandria (thanks to the
intellect and traditions of her people) laid the foundation
of the admirable edifice of Christian theology. It was
the chief glory of the Greek fathers that there was re
served for them the great dogmatic work of defining the
doctrines concerning the essential nature of the Godhead
and its relation with manhood in the Incarnation.
If now we pass to consider Western or Roman Cathol
icism we note that its peculiar character has its profound
and sufficient reason in the psychology and tradition of
Roman people. While Greek Christianity became, as we
have seen, essentially "theology," Roman Christianity
shaped itself, above everything else, into "law." The
Roman Church was deficient in speculative strength.
She had not inherited from the empire a great philo
sophical tradition. Even the most celebrated of Roman
thinkers, Cicero, Lucretius and Seneca were wanting in
originality ; they were but explainers of the philosophical
theories come from Greece.
And so with the church. The greatest among her
fathers were not deep theologians. Ambrose, Hilary,
Leo, for instance, excelled more in the homiletic field
than in the speculative. Gregory was greater as a states
man and organizer than as a theologian. Jerome was
more remarkable for his erudition than for anything else.
The Roman Church did not produce anything to be com
pared to "De Principiis" of Origen, or "Contra Arianos"
of Athanasius. Therefore, when dissension broke out
between the pagan culture and Christian doctrine, and
114

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
during the long epoch of Christological controversy the
Roman Church did relatively little to solve the abstruse
theological problems which confronted Christianity.
But, on the other hand, the Roman Church shewed an
extraordinary aptitude in practical matters. While
Greek churchmen were entirely absorbed in examining
and explaining the principles of faith, Romans exerted a
wonderful activity in the interpretation of the practical
bearings of the same faith. They developed discipline,
hierarchical organization, the government of the church.
They elaborated and consolidated ecclesiastical law. The
remarkable skill of the Roman Church in systematizing
the faith was an heritage left her together with its tra
dition by the Roman Empire. The Roman ideal, with
its admirable institutions, law, culture and history, had
not died away at the fall of the empire. It was too great
to die. It had survived the ruin of the ancient world.
The Church of Rome had the privilege of inheriting the
incomparable patrimony of the empire. She welcomed
and appropriated it, by giving it religious consecration.
Thus it was the church that caused the empire to be re
vived under a religious form. She renewed ecclesiasti
cally its grandeur and political glories. The empire had
subjugated and unified the world and, moreover, created
a universal law: the Roman Church became herself a
symbol of majesty, of order, of the unification of Chris
tian peoples, a true center of Catholicity. The bishops
of Rome concentrated in themselves all the power and
prestige of the Caesars. All the ancient legal notions
concerning the sovereign emperor were taken over by the
autocracy of Rome and applied to the Popes. Such is
the genesis of Roman or Papal Catholicism. It is a re-
115

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ligious system closely connected with the tradition and
genius of the people who elaborated it.
******* The same applies to Protestantism. The Protestant
religion is a form of Christianity perfectly consistent
with the spirit and social atmosphere of the people who
produced it. In fact, what are the most profound char
acteristics of Protestantism? They are rationalism and
individualism. Protestantism is the triumph of indi
vidual critical reason in the religious sphere. "Away,"
said the German reformers, "with the Pope, the bishops,
the priests, the saints, the virgin, with all the mediators
which impede direct intercourse between God and man.
Away with auricular confession, real presence, sacra
ments and traditions of the church which sully the purity
of the evangelical faith. Let us free religion from dog
matism, institutional forms, rites of worship, from all its
adventitious and harmful accretions. Let the external
pomp of the Catholic Church be replaced by a new
worship, inward, simple and spiritual."
Thus said the German reformers. Doubtless their pro
test had its historical justification in the corruption, for
malism and sensualism of the religion as presented by the
papal church. Again, it is beyond question that the re
ligious conception of the reformers, fundamentally was
not lacking in truly useful, great and venerable elements.
But the radicalism of their criteria and methods failed
them. The spiritual values of fifteen centuries of Chris
tian life were neglected; the authority of the universal
conscience of Christianity was disregarded and the indi
vidual reason became supreme. German reformers
aimed at a more direct and inward relation between God
and man; but, in pursuing their aim, they lessened the
116

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ideal of the Christian Church as being a body, a kingdom,
and gave origin to the fatal tendency to empty Chris
tianity of its historical content and vitality. By replac
ing the complete revelation of universal Christian con
science and life with the fragmentary experience of each
soul, they shook the fundamental principle of the soli
darity of the Christian family. Thus Protestantism,
which by its founders was intended to be an inward and
deep religion, became an individual, rational and free
religion. The negative and destructive results of the
criticism of Straus, Baur, Ewald, Ritschl, Wellhousen,
Bleek, Nitzsch, Harnack, and other German theologians
and scholars are the legitimate fruits, in due season, of
the principles laid down by the German reformers of the
sixteenth century. Finally, Protestantism was to be an
austere religion, which by emphasizing such doctrines as
predestination, justification through faith alone, and the
free grace of salvation would fill the heart of man with
an intense faith, a holy trepidation for the salvation of
his own soul, an absolute trust in God; and it ended in
becoming a chillingly inhuman religion.
Yet, in spite of all its faults and limitations, no un
prejudiced man can deny that the Protestant conception
implies an intense awakening of conscience, a deep con
cern with spiritual problems, a need to make religion a
personal reality.
But Christianity, as conceived by the reformers of the
sixteenth century, was possible only among German peo
ple. Protestantism is, above all, a conception in harmony
with the physiognomy of Teutonic race.
German peoples are quite as peculiar in respect to
their physical structure as in moral character. Climate,
117

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
surroundings and other natural elements made Germans
a simple and grave people, devoted to the family and
domestic life, endowed with a deep religious sentiment,
and ardent lovers of spiritual freedom. In the German
people the faculties of reason and intellect predominate
rather than those of fancy and sentiment. They are cold,
reflective, deep, tenacious and energetic. They love to
be absorbed by their own thoughts, and have, accord
ingly, a mysterious and gloomy temper. They are pessi
mistic in their conceptions, rigid in their taste. They are
pre-eminently philosophic and critical. The fact that
some Germans have been able to raise themselves to the
heights of the most abstract idealism cannot disprove the
positive character of Teutonic race. Again, Germans are
phlegmatic, yet capable of deep spiritual emotions and
moral discipline. They are given to gluttony, drunkenness
and various other excesses, yet, at the same time, are
disposed to self-denial and sacrifice and loyal to moral
principles. Such is the physical and moral character of the Ger
man race. The faithless and cruel Prussianism of the
Bismarcks, Hohenzollerns and Hindenburgs has altered
and deformed its features, yet the Germany of Luther,
Durer, Bach, Leibnitz, Goethe and Schiller, Beethoven
and Wagner, in brief the real and genuine Germany, is
human and warm and tender.
The German reformation, so deeply marked by ra
tionalistic principles, individual methods, austere out
ward features, and, moreover, implying a lively religious
sense as well as a great love for spiritual freedom, was
the natural emanation of German psychology and char
acter. As the art of Durer and the music of Bach, so the
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Protestantism and the Latin Soul
religious conception of Luther is the peculiar expression
of the German race.
******* Even among the Anglo-Saxons, religion was a reflec
tion of the character of the people. If we analyze this
people we discover the religious and moral ideas which
underlie their soul. In England the severity of nature,
the stubborn character of race, the liberty of institutions
and other physical, psychological and ethical elements
brought about strong and vigorous manners, an intense
sensibility towards duty and self-control, and an un
flinching loyalty to moral law. The Englishman is a
deeply religious man, a Christian in his reason and prac
tice. While at the root of the French soul lies the ten
dency to sociality; of the Italian's, the sentiment of
beauty; of the Englishman's, the idea of duty. The
Englishman is moral rather than psychological or meta
physical. He is occupied and preoccupied with the eth
ical elements of philosophy. To him religion, rather
than emotion, is law, discipline, morals. The English
man is practical in education as well as religion. He is,
moreover, remarkably sober in his mental disposition and
psychologic habits. His sense of moderation leads him
almost instinctively to avoid the extreme tendencies and
radicalism of the German.
One may give many instances of the essentially re
ligious character of the Anglo-Saxons. Glance at the
literary history of England. On studying English lit
erature one feels that the people who produced it cannot
be but deeply religious. It breaths religion. Englishmen
whose genius stamped such manifest traces in the field
of art, as well as of science, were men of faith.
In fact, Bacon, the founder of modern scientific meth-
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Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ods, pours out his religion in prayers to God, worthy of
the pen of St. Augustine.
The writings of the most illustrious English thinkers
of the seventeenth century, as Burton, Thomas Browne
and Raleigh, are impressed with the genuine spirit of
faith. It was the inspiration of faith that raised the genius
of the puritan Milton to the loftiest heights of art.
Newton, the founder of modern physics, concerns himself
with religious studies and comments on the Apocalypse.
Clarke, a man of encyclopedic mind, scholar, mathema
tician and philsopher, is also a theologian. Chilling-
worth, Addison, Paley and a great many other scholars,
literary men and philosophers, write apologies, exposi
tions and discussions on Christianity.
Boyle, one of the acknowledged leaders of experi
mental philosophy ; widely known thinkers, scientists and
scholars as Ray, Barrow, Bentley, Warburton and Berke
ley; as well as prominent writers, such as Swift, John
son and Richardson employ the power of their genius to
confute Collins, Tyndall and certain other irreligious
men. Do we wish to proportion the width of English re
ligiousness ? Let us listen to Burke, the new Cicero, who,
before the parliament, anathematizes with fiery words the
French revolution, Rousseau, Voltaire and the other free
thinkers who prepared the way to it. With a not less
solemn tone Pitt, in one of his famous parliamentary
speeches, denounces French irreligion and declares that
Englishmen could not treat with an atheistic nation.
Going on, we discover that the most famous novelists,
De Foe, Richardson and Goldsmith, in writing their
works, aim at moral ends. 120

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Samuel Johnson, the great literary critic, was a man
of deep faith and severe piety. Like Burke and Pitt, he
was greatly scandalized by the irreligion of Rousseau
and Voltaire.
William Cowper was so intensely pious that he thought
himself unworthy of going to church, or even of pray
ing to God. The muse of Campbell and Wordsworth
was sincerely Christian. Walter Scott, the creator of the
historical novel, was full of faith and animated by the
purest moral principles.
A further instance of the religious genius of English
people is afforded by the fact that the skepticism and
incredulity of Shelley roused such an indignation that
he was expelled from the university and his father re
fused to see him.
Again, we see the novels of Dickens, Thackeray and
almost all the great English novelists to have a moral
purpose. As to Dickens, the following quotation from
one of his letters may throw light on his faith :
There cannot be many men, I believe, who have
a more humble veneration of the New Testament
or a more profound conviction of its all-sufficiency
than I have.
The writers who, like Hume and Gibbon, rejected the
Christian faith, the pagan poets, like Shelley and Keats,
the skeptical, as Byron, are comparatively few. The
literary annals of England are, on the whole, religious
annals. If, then, we turn our consideration to the Church of
England herself, and examine her life, her history and
features, we shall have a still more luminous instance of
the religious genius and spirituality of the English soul.
We do not need to dwell upon the great part that Eng-
121

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
land played, both preparing and working out the Re
formation, in the sixteenth century. The same religious
spirit which was then fully at work and gave us such
admirable monuments as the King James translation of
the Bible and the Prayer Book, continued to express
itself under various forms also in the following ages.
The great theological movement of the seventeenth
century, within the Church of England, is but a form of
the deep English concern for religion and its problems.
The school of Richard Hooker and other famous theo
logians who, at Elizabeth's death, had already vindicated
the sound teachings of the Church of the Apostles and
Fathers, as well as the right of the English national
church, became even stronger under the Stuarts. An
drews, Laud, Chillingworth, Taylor, Cosin, Kent and
others, both with their learning and zeal enlightened the
Christian world. The deep religiousness that marked
the English seventeenth century is shown also in the
works of Richard Baxter, the learned and saintly puritan.
Even the most skeptical of ages, the eighteenth cen
tury, can afford us a striking proof of the religious char
acter of Englishmen. The eighteenth century was char
acterized by criticism, doubt and unbelief. It was the
triumph of the spirit of Voltaire and his school, which
had attacked Christianity with caustic wit. Yet, amidst
the general decline in the spiritual activities, John Wes
ley and George Whitfield led one of the most remarkable
religious movements known in history. Spiritual enthusi
asm, and the inspiration of personal piety were marvel-
ously revived through the length and breadth of England,
and religion became once again a powerful factor in
English civilization. It was also then that the religious
122

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
genius of Robert Raikes, the originator and establisher of
the Sunday school system, set itself at work.
Then consider, in the nineteenth century, the striking
movement known as "Tractarianism." While England
was wholly absorbed in the solution of the most ponder
ous social problems, as the electoral reform, the institu
tion of free trade, the abolition of slavery, and the con
solidation of colonial power, her spiritual energies were
not drowsy. From one side a strong evangelical move
ment, led by Wilberforce, John Venn and Hannah More
revived the old puritan strictness and obtained the great
triumph of the abolition of slavery. On the other hand,
a small group of churchmen, Pusey, Newman, and Keble,
followed by Froude, Isaac Williams, Rose, Church and
some others as learned as zealous, wrought a yet more
wonderful work. Under the impulse of the Holy Spirit
they set themselves with noble enthusiasm to restore to
the Church of England the full consciousness of her
Catholic origin and mission in the world, a consciousness
which had been deeply affected during the great storm of
the Reformation. Such revising, or, better, perfecting
of the Reformation was followed by a remarkable revival
of spiritual energies, zeal for the cause of the Master,
and strengthening of the corporate life of the Church.
The effects of that God-inspired Catholic awakening,
which has remained famous among the religious annals
of modern times, are still visible in the Church of Eng
land. Such are the Anglo-Saxon peoples and such is their
soul. It is their faith that gives us the reason why their
civilization was essentially religious. While the most
famous periods of Latin civilization, represented by Leo
X, Louis XIV and Voltaire, mean essentially but pagan-
123

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ism, wordliness and irreligion, Queen Elizabeth, on the
contrary, is the exponent of the civilization belonging to
deeply religious peoples.
As the religion of other peoples, even so that of Eng
lishmen was strongly influenced by their physical, psy
chological and ethical structure. The mind, faculties and
habits of the English people are so deeply reflected in
their spiritual conceptions and relations as to constitute a
quite peculiar type of religion.
Doubtless, the most decisive phase in the religious life
of Englishmen was the Anglican reformation, whereby
the fathers of the Church of England, though careful in
preserving the essential principles of historic Christian
ity, substituted for the crystallized and corrupt religion
of the papalized medieval church a purer, more reason
able and adaptable faith, replaced a purely formal theol
ogy by practical morality and re-affirmed, against the
Roman claims, the rights of the early national churches.
We have hinted at moderation, as being one of the
leading characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon people. We
see this characteristic reflected in their mental as well as
religious attitude. Moderation is indeed the outstanding
feature of Anglican reformation. The fathers of the
Anglican reformation, though agreeing with the conti
nental reformers on a general reforming purpose, yet
followed a course of their own, in the pursuit of the
common end. Endowed as they were with a great sense
of discretion, in which German reformers lacked, they
realized a fatal danger in allowing themselves to be
drawn bytheir own individual views and tendencies. They
looked, accordingly, for guidance to something more
universal and objective than their private conscience;
the experience of historical Christianity. While the re-
124

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
formers of the continent, eager to break with the past,
were inaugurating a quite new religious experience, An
glican theologians were looking intently to primitive
Christianity. In the convocation of 1571, the priests
were enjoined, by a canon, "to teach nothing but what
is agreeable to the doctrines of the Old and New Testa
ment, and which 'ancient fathers and Catholic bishops'
have collected out of that said doctrine." Thus the light
of the primitive, pure and apostolic Christianity shone
gloriously from the Anglican reformation.
A great many Italian writers (and among them Gae
tano Negri) seem strongly disposed to reproach the
Church of England with the fact that she kept a great
part of the doctrines, ritual and practices of the Roman
Church. They would have liked a more thorough and
radical reform. It seems to them as if Anglicanism
stopped midway and did not complete its work. But they
are greatly mistaken. They misunderstand the ideal
entertained by the Fathers of the Anglican reformation.
They fail to realize that the Anglican Fathers, unlike the
reformers of the continent, conceived the Christian
Church as a "divine and living organism," and, accord
ingly, were careful in preserving the continuity of its
life, in order to insure the legitimate development of its
future.

125

CHAPTER IV
VARIANCE BETWEEN PROTESTANTISM AND THE
LATIN SPIRIT.
Latin peoples, as a whole, cannot comprehend Protest
antism. If we analyze the interior structure of the Latin
race, we realize that the most profound differences exist
between it on one side and the Teutons on the other.
The mind, spirit, in brief, the psychologic form of the
Latin has nothing or very little in common with the
German. To become fully convinced of this truth one ought not
to look at the French people, for they are the least typical
among the Latins. When one thinks of France, his mind
is naturally led to recall the splendid display of a sump
tuous court and a brilliant society which gave fashion to
Europe. France is generally spoken of as the country of
wordliness, teacher in the art of good manners, conversa
tion and eloquence, arbiter in politeness and elegance.
That is all.
People commonly fail to think of the tragic furies of
the eighteenth centuries. The French are usually con
sidered as the gayest and most comic people in the world ;
yet they have suffered the greatest tragedies of history
with an admirable fortitude. They seem thoughtless, yet
they have been able to effect the greatest revolution of
thought and life known throughout all time. They seem
frivolous, worldly and pleasure seekers ; yet, when they
wish, they know how to be as sober and temperate as any
other people in the world. They can, if need be, find
within themselves an immense moral strength, a spirit of
127

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
self-sacrifice inexhaustible. The Frenchman is brilliant,
rapid, bold, eloquent, rhetorical ; but he knows, when he
will, how to be solid and grave. He is impulsive, ardent,
going to the extreme ; yet he is also capable of common
sense, moderation, and self-control.
Behold the Frenchman as revealed to us by the world-
war. His patriotism, his courage and heroism and, above
all, his spirit of devotion to duty and of self-sacrifice has
astonished the world. Ancient Greece and Rome have
but little to compare with the sublime spectacle of France
in the present war. French soldiers have been the living
walls against which German hordes have beaten in vain
for three years and a half. It is France that has borne,
more heavily than any other of the allied nations, the
brunt of the German assault upon mankind. That
France, which, in 1799, took upon herself the fate of
Europe, is now again bearing the burden of the world's
destiny. She is suffering, bleeding, agonizing in order
that freedom and social faith may survive in the world.
Yes, France is dying today for the salvation of the
human race !
The French character is one of the most varied and
complex of human phenomena. The Frenchman seems to
be the fusion of the peoples of both North and South
Europe, Latins and Anglo-Saxons blended in one. He
is at once a thinker like the German, a moralist like the
Englishman, and an artist like the Italian. He is a bit of
everything. What a mystery indeed is the French soul!
On one side the worldliness and court finesse of Moliere
and, on the other, the puritan severity of a Calvin and
a Pascal. The eloquence and rhetoric of Bossuet and the
subtle analysis of Descartes. . . . The imperialism
128

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
of Napoleon and the inexhaustible thirst for freedom of
Voltaire and Rousseau. . . . The exuberant Cathol
icism of Chateaubriand and the stern Protestantism of
Guizot. . . . The fervid enthusiasm of Michelet and
the passionate hatred of Taine. . . . The uncom
promising ultramontanism of De Maistre and the re
ligious liberalism of Dupanloup, Lamennais, Maret,
Montalembert, Lacordaire and several others ; and in our
times the clinging to traditional religion of Veuillot and
Brunetiere, the revolutionary modernism of Loisy,
Houtin, Laberthonnier, Le Roy, Paul Sabatier, and the
liberal Protestantism of Reville and his school.
The French soul is as complex as is French history.
Think of the great Revolution, of Jean d'Arc, Saint-
Barthelemy, Marat, the Crusades and Saint Louis and of
Abelard! Think of Voltaire, Rousseau, Saint
Vincent de Paul, the Terror, Victor Hugo, the rock of
Solferino, Boulanger, Saint Simon and Fourier!
The history of France, even in its single events, strikes
us with contrasts. Consider the Revolution. Nothing
was more hideous and cruel than it; yet, it was, at the
same time, one of the greatest and most sacred pages in
history, for it was from amidst its follies and tragic
furors that the fundamental charter of European liber
ties sprang. The Protestant Reformation of the six
teenth century, by proclaiming the principle of free ex
amination, had prepared, it is true, the nations for the
conquest of political liberties and civil equality; but it
was only a remote preparation. The revolutions of
Geneva, Holland, and England were very successful in
hastening the establishment of the political rights of
humanity; yet it was the Revolution of 1789 that actually
brought about the greatest of all achievements. For it
129

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
not only conquered the political rights for all the citizens,
but also the equality of civil rights and suppressed all the
medieval privileges and abuses. It marked the real end
of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the new times.
Liberty today would not illuminate all civilized peoples
without the fateful 1789.
Such antitheses of the French soul express themselves
in art and thought, as well as in religion. But in the last
they are perhaps supreme. Doubtless the French are the
most religious, nay, the only religious people among the
Latin nations. The religious genius of the French people
is clearly shown by the keen interest taken by that nation
not only in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth
century, but also in all the religious problems and con
troversies which arose in the course of the times. Dur
ing the seventeenth century and a part of the eighteenth
France was in the heat of the Jansenistic struggle. Not
only theologians famous for their stern principles, in
tegrity of morals and deep scholarship, as Nicole,
Arnauld and others, engaged in the struggle, but even
philosophers and literati, Pascal and Racine, entered the
field. The French Jansenists proved, indeed, the most
terrible hammers of the Jesuitical dogmatic, morals and
social polity.
At the same time the Gallican Catholic Tillemont (who
had been educated by the Jansenists of Port Royal)
wrote the sixteen volumes of his invaluable "Memoires,"
a history of the first six centuries of the Church,
prompted by the most liberal spirit.
Coming to more recent times, we see the Frenchmen
leading the modern movement of liberal Catholicism.
The most zealous apostles of the alliance between Chris
tianity and liberalism came from France. Think of the
130

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
vehemence with which the Abbe Gratry, in his great
"Letters Against the Papal Infallibility," denounced
Roman errors as impairing the treasure of the Catholic
faith. At the sight (he writes in his second letter) of
this audacity and this power of falsehood, intro
ducing itself into theology, I can understand that
all those who do not take in the whole of the
questions should be seized with giddiness and cry
out: What then can we believe now? What be
comes of the bases of the faith?
Among the Roman Catholics, who, even before the
dogmatic promulgation of infallibility had opposed the
absolute authority of the pope, there was none stronger
than the Abbe Chatel, who dared to found and propa
gate a French Catholic Church, disavowing the papal
supremacy. Then think of Lamennais, putting forth to the men of
the nineteenth century the ideal of a great religious re
vival as the necessary condition of the regeneration of
the peoples. He sought the highest Church authority,
not in an infallible pope, but in the universal consent of
all Christians. He foreshadowed the birth of the Catho
lic democracy and may be truly regarded as the spiritual
parent of modernism, conceived in the tragedy of his
religious condemnation.
Again, think of Bishop Maret, who, long before Tyrrel
and Loisy, discovered the fundamental principle of mod
ernism, namely, the evolutive character of Christian
truth and life. He accordingly demanded a new inter
pretation of Catholic dogmas, more especially of those
relating to the hierarchy. Also of the vigorous war
waged against the Ultramontanes by Pere Hyacinth
131

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Loyson, of his ex-communication by the pope, his perse
cutions open and concealed, and the foundation in Paris
of the independent "Eglise Gallicane.1"
Even those among the neo-Catholics, who did not fol
low the radical evolution of Lamennais, excite our warm
sympathy. This is true of Montalembert, whose en
thusiasm for the liberal movement and persistent, tho
unsuccessful, opposition to the acceptance of the dogma
of papal infallibility, are too well known.
Also of Lacordaire, whose last pathetic words, "I
die a penitent Catholic, but an impenitent liberal," char
acterize his whole life.
Then recall to the mind the strong plea of the illus
trious Abbe Houtin in behalf of a vital adaptation of
faith to its modern environment. With prophetic accent
he presaged the crisis with which soon or late the
Roman Catholic Church has to be confronted, stating
that the religious thought and conscience of Christians
move forward in spite of the Vatican.
The pope, he says, has before him something
which he will not be able to arrest. This is the
popularization of history. With this penetration
of historical knowledge among the people, the
crisis will become unceasingly more radical and
more terrible.1
Behold Jean Reville, championing Liberal Protestant
ism and sharply arguing about the groundlessness of the
hope of a reformation of Roman Catholicism "with the
pope."

"The Crisis in the Catholic Church (in "The Crisis Among the
French Clergy"). Transl. from the French by F. T. Dickson,
David Nutt, London, 1910. The paragraph continues as follows :
"Those Roman institutions, the Index and the Inquisition, can
132

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Catholicism, he cries, may perhaps reform itself,
but it can only be from the root, against Rome and
not with Rome.
Hear Paul Sabatier, who, with encouraging words,
warns men not to lose faith in the final triumph of the
new religious ideas.
The pope on the one hand, he writes, and the
modernists on the other are the representatives of
two mentalities, of two civilizations, confronting
each other. Which of the two will prevail? To
state the question is to answer it. Life and youth
must necessarily prevail.

no longer shackle the liberty of the press. Sapped in its historical
bases, the Roman Church will, like other orthodoxies less marked,
be obliged to become a small sect, or to adapt herself to new
religious conceptions. But can the Roman Church thus adapt
herself? The Church which declares herself infallible, which
imposes as dogmas so many historical errors, which utters her
anathema on all attempts at a new interpretation — this Church
of Rome, is she not petrified? Can any one hope for another
line of conduct on the part of the Popes of the future? There
have been learned Popes, tolerant Popes, even sceptical Popes.
What attitude have they taken toward the truth? What attitude
have they taken toward charity, and especially toward the im
portant question of the reunion of Christianity? As a great
historian has said, "It is not always the same pope, but it is
always the same Papacy."
The Abbe Houtin wrote, besides the work mentioned, "La
Question Biblique au XIXe siecle" ; "La Question Biblique au
XXe siecle"; "La Controverse de l'Apostolicite" ; "American-
isme." Houtin tells us that Leo XIII tried hard to regain the great
orator for the Church, while he was passing the winter 1896-97
at Rome. But the attitude of the conscientious priest was un
compromising. 133

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Then think of Loisy, the deep critic and historian, and,
at once, the warm believer, and consider how boldly, how
fearlessly he has led the war between authority and
criticism, official tradition and historical scholarship.
Add to all these illustrious figures the names of Maur
ice Blondel, Laberthonniere, Le Roy, Abbe Duilhe, Mgr.
D'Hulst,1 Portal,2 Le Morin, Viollet and several others
who have so bravely engaged themselves in the tragic
struggle of the modern conscience against the immovable
and stagnant Catholicism of the Vatican, and you will
realize the deep concern of Frenchmen with religion and
its problems.

"Mgr. D'Hulst is doubtless one of the greatest figures in the
history of modern Catholicism, a man eager for a purification
of the Christian faith from the traditional errors which deturp
it. He is the acknowledged leader of the French Catholic clergy
who have been pleading for a more free and liberal critical
method in the Biblical and historical field. His noble ideal
purposing to make the Catholic Institute of Paris a center of
scientific studies was enthusiastically shared by the Abbe Duilhe
de Saint-Projet, Mgrs. Duchesne, Loisy and others. In 1893 the
Jesuit Father Brucker gave the alarm. He and his colleagues
made the pope believe the new method of Scriptural interpre
tation championed by D'Hulst to be destructive of the founda
tions of the Church and leading to individualism, the source of
all heresies. Following the papal Encyclical "Providentissimus
Deus," D'Hulst was obliged to convoke the professors of the
Institute and ask their unreserved adhesion to the papal doctrine
concerning Scriptures and their exegesis.
'Abbe F. Portal was the chief editor of "La Revue Catholique
des figlises," which was published until the close of 1908. For
several years Portal took part (under the pseudonym of Dalbus)
in the question of the Anglican Orders, whose validity he strongly
maintained. In 1908 he was deprived of his office of Superior
of the House of Saint Vincent de Paul, in Paris, on the order of
Rome, which holds his doctrine rather unsound.
134

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Those also who, like Bishop Mignot,1 Prof. Duchesne,'
Prof. Batiffol and others have reputation for unimpeach
able orthodoxy in the faith, couple with their broad and
sympathetic Catholicism a deeply religious spirit.
Even the conversions of Brunetiere, Huysmans, Cop-
pee and Rette, who, in recent times, passed from the bit
terest hostility to religion to the greatest enthusiasm for
Roman Catholicism, bear witness to the living religious
sentiment of the French soul.
When one thinks of the great part played by French
men in the past history of Christianity, he becomes eas
ily convinced that they are destined to exert a decisive
influence even on the Christianity of the future. It is
to the French that we must look for the advent of a more
liberal Catholicism. There is but little to be expected
from the other Latin peoples, because of their lack of
religious sentiment and interest.
One of the deterrnining causes of French religiousness
"Mgr. Mignot, Bishop of Albi, is one of those prelates whose
frank and honest acknowledgment of the modern crisis of Ca
tholicism has been regarded with strong suspicion by the Ultra
montanes. In his funeral oration over Bishop Le Camus (1906)
he expressed himself thus : "The Christian population turns
toward us, their masters and fathers in the faith, asking us to
explain their religion to them and to justify our own. They
speak the language of the time in which they were born, of the
world in which they live, of the knowledge which they have
acquired; they ask us to speak to them in their language. They
ask this : and shall we not reply ?"
"Although Mgr. Duchesne, through his evasive and equivocal
method, has received a different fate from that of Loisy, yet the
theological conclusions, which logically can be drawn from his
statements, are not less radical than those of the great Modern
ist. His views (expressed in the famous "L'Histoire ancienne de
I'Eglise": Paris, Montemoing, 1906) are, on several points, at
variance with the traditional doctrine. 135

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
must be found in the fact that he is more a northern than
a southern, more in touch with the Anglo-Saxons than
with Italians and Spaniards. The Frenchman is Catho
lic, but he is, among Catholics, the most apt to under
stand Protestant conceptions and to sympathize with
them. If that were not true one could not explain how
France gave birth to such stern Protestants as Calvin,
Rabelais, Pascal, Malebranche, Arnauld, Nichole, Guizot
and many others.
None, among Roman Catholic peoples, are more inde
pendent of Rome than are the French. They are truly
national, Gallican Catholics. The whole history of the
French Church is marked by distinctively national char
acters. No branch of the Catholic Church has asserted
more strongly its right to autonomy than the Church of
France. The Pragmatic Sanction of Louis IX ; the part
played at the Council of Trent by the Cardinal of Lor
raine and the other legates of the king; the declaration
of 1682, made under the influence of the eloquent Bos-
suet; the vigorous opposition by Bishop Dupanloup and
the French prelates to the dogma of infallibility, witness
in a striking manner the independent spirit of the French.
French Gallicanism has had moments of shining glory
and prestige. It was it that promoted the reforming
Councils of Constance, Basle and Pisa. It threw upon
the church an undying luster through its Filaster, Peter
d'Ailly, Gerson and Bossuet. It has been the most sound
fraction within the Church of Rome; and had it not
been overcome by the Ultramontanes, it would, most
likely, have brought about a reform of the Church.
France led all other nations in opposing the invading and
delinquent action of the Papacy and she would have
almost surely overwhelmed it had not the political inter-
136

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
est prevailed over the religious, beginning from the six
teenth century.
******* Leaving aside the French, let us look, instead, at the
more typically Latin peoples, the Spanish and Italian.
In the Spanish we have a people overflowing with imagi
nation and enthusiasm, romantic, chivalrous, caring ex
clusively for appearance, extraordinarily pompous and
ceremonious. As in life, so in literature and art, the
Spaniard is exaggerated, inflated, affected. No type is
more apt to illustrate the character of the Spaniards
than their greatest writer, Cervantes, the fantastic, hu
morous and eccentric author of "Don Quixote." An
other genuine personification of the Spanish soul is Lope
de Vega, who, while a young boy, was a volunteer, then
a passionate lover, a wandering knight, a soldier of the
Armada, and finally a priest and officer in the holy office,
full of religious fervor and ardent with mysticism.
However, to see the Spaniards in their true light, we
need not to look at the individual personalities. It is
enough to glance at their civilization. As the Italian
Renaissance was but paganism and corruption, so the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which marked the
summit of Spanish civilization, meant substantially empti
ness of thought, vanity of external pomp and decay of
the inner spirit. The Italians, by subordinating the ideals
of religion and liberty to those of art, turning exclusively
toward beauty and voluptuousness and neglecting the cul
tivation of moral character, declined and were enslaved
by foreign rulers. So the Spaniards, failing to keep alive
the multiform human activities and the sacred ideal of
liberty, were reduced under the sway of Roman religious
despotism and cast themselves into the aberrations of the
137

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Inquisition and into fanatical wars. Thus they lost their
civil conscience, and, being isolated from the rest of
Europe, grew weak and wicked in inertia, in ignorance
and superstition. Today, while the other Latin nations,
from France to the small Portugal, are arrayed against
the monstrous Teutonic Kultur, Spain has isolated her
self. The ancient stronghold of papalism is enjoying
peace and tranquility at a time when the rest of the
world is convulsed by the most terrible crisis in the annals
of history. But the latter are the convulsions of life;
the former the peace and tranquility of the grave. Spain
is dead; she has no energy to offer on the altar of the
most sacred human and social ideals.
If now we turn our consideration to the Italians, we
will be enabled to form a still clearer idea about the
Latin races, for the Italian may be held to be the most
representative of Latin nations.
Nature in Italy shows itself in the fullest of its splen
did profusion and magnificence. In land and sky, along
the shores of her Mediterranean Sea, there breathes an
air of beauty, poetry, refinement, and languor. The nat
ural features of the Italian peninsula invite to voluptu
ous ease rather than to action ; and combining with other
elements, as nearness to and contact with Greece and
East, and the despotism of the various foreign rulers,
have determined among the Italian peoples an unnerved
character, an idle life and effeminate manners.
Unlike the Germans, in the Italians predominate fan
tastic and sentimental faculties. They are warm-
natured, impulsive, and extremely voluble. While deep
beliefs and strong affections lie under the impassive sur
face of the Englishman, the animated Italians, on the
contrary, mostly lack depth of emotion. They are gay,
138

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
exuberant, lovers of pomp and magnificence. They care
more for appearance than for substance. And then it
seems that nature itself makes them poets and artists.
Indeed the instinct of the beautiful with which they are
endowed is remarkable, and the tendency they feel to
cultivate and express esthetic elements could not be
stronger. It is such innate sentiment that gave Italy
the primacy of genius and taste in the world. Again, the
worship of beauty, connatural to Italians and, in a less
degree, to all Latin peoples, explains various features of
Roman Catholicism, for instance, the exaltation of Mary
the Virgin.
Doubtless to account for the exaggerated worship of
Mary in the Latin Church there were some causes of
theological order, the chief of which is to be found in the
peculiar relation of Mary to the Godhead in the Incar
nation of the Word, which draws her nearer than any
other creature to God and makes her truly "full of grace"
and "blessed amongst women." Yet none will deny that
other elements besides this concurred to glorify the Vir
gin. In Mary, together with the idea of womanhood to
which the religious instincts of mankind are ready to pay
worship, in a more or less refined manner, the Latins
associated the concept of "motherhood," including in
itself all that is most lovely, tender, gentle, sweet and
touching on earth. Virginity, mysteriously coupled with
maternity, completed the superhuman features of Mary.
She became a supreme type of beauty, grace, poetry — a
type which touched not only the soul of the people, but
impressed also the most powerful geniuses, as Dante.
Mary, in conclusion, is but the idealization of moral
beauty, in harmony with the esthetic psychology of Latin
peoples. 139

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
What is said of Mary is true also of the Saints, in
general, with this difference: that the former answered
to a natural artistic impulse, while the latter answered
more particularly to a spiritual tendency. The venera
tion of the Saints has become an important part of Catho
lic worship, because both the consciousness of the Catho
lic Church and the religious soul of the Catholic peoples
have felt an almost innate need for it. It seems that the
Saints, with their intermediary power and office, are
something necessary to their devotional instinct. They
love their Saints, they delight in praising their holy lives
and celebrating their feasts. They honor them, because
they believe, nay realize, that God Himself has loved and
exalted them. They pray to the Saints, they ask all kinds
of favors of them, both spiritual and temporal, because
they believe that Christ acts and shows His power
through them. They have recourse to the Saints for the
reason that they feel that the Saints lead them to Christ
and realize that they find Christ in them. They think of
the Saints, and, in doing so, they, pilgrims of the earth,
feel the heavenly Jerusalem nearer. Being Christians of
the militant church, they find it quite natural to seek
inspiration and holy courage in the captains of the noble
army who have fought the good fight and now triumph
victorious in glory.
Is all this tribute paid to the Saints a mere supersti
tion? The rationalistic Protestantism says so. Doubt
less it is easily mixed with superstition. Sometimes, if
not often, it becomes even vulgar; yet the spirit which
pervades it is really and genuinely Christian. It springs
mostly from hearts animated by faith and becomes con
sequently an act of true piety. Protestants hold the
honor given to the Saints derogatory to the honor due to
140

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
God, yet Catholics with reverence salute in the Saints
nothing else but the gift of God Himself. They look at
the Saints, because they behold Christ reflected in them.
Protestants, whose religion seems to be all in the brains
and none in the heart, denounce the Catholic attitude
toward the Saints as idolatrous and trivial ; yet Catholics
feel through their Saints the very touch of God. In the
"Communion of the Saints" they find themselves in com
munion with God; joining the Saints they join the King
of the Saints.
******* But Italians, being an eminently artistic race, could
not be, at the same time, a religious people. In fact, Ital
ians have not proved themselves religious throughout the
course of the past ages, nor are they today.
Italians, the most richly gifted with vivacity of wit
and splendid imagination, are the poorest and weakest of
all peoples, religiously. They are confined by the taste
for harmonious forms, and are drawn more strongly
toward the ideal of esthetic beauty than that of truth and
goodness. Their culture is productive of estheticism
rather than of spirituality.
While the Teutons disdain appearance and are eager
for facts and reality, Italians look exclusively for the
former and are not concerned with the latter. The
Anglo-Saxons love to analyze their own spirit and har
monize it with the ideal of moral perfection, Italians in
dulge in the contemplation of the external world and
delight in the spectacle of elegant forms. Anglo-Saxons
erect duty into a supreme factor in human life ; Italians
prostrate all ideal models before that of art and pleasure.
Carlyle despised most, among the literati of all nations,
those of Italy, because of their being essentially artists,
141

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
which meant to him that the source of their art is only
the sentiment of form. He thought that, as with the
Greek, so the Italian writers and poets did not know any
beauty beside that of healthy vigor, pleasure and voluptu
ousness. Carlyle was right, to a very great extent. In
deed, the ideals of religion, of moral character, of duty
and the like are only secondary features in the soul of
the Italian. Conscience has a very limited power over
him. He is almost incapable of voluntary discipline and
moral austerity, and takes life at its easiest, satisfied to
enjoy. It has been said that the best way to know a people is
to look at them in the culminant stage of their civiliza
tion. What that civilization is, such are those who pro
duced it. Well, then, let us consider the Italian Renais
sance. What was it but the working of a magnificent
and harmonious genius towards the worship of beauty
and pleasure? The substance of the Italian Renaissance
was paganism revived in thought, art and life.
In Italy, remarks Joseph Spencer Kennard,1 no
popular movement which betrays the soul of a
whole people can be traced to a purely religious
motive, as can the Reformation in Germany. No
popular leader has owed his authority wholly to
religion. Francis of Assisi appealed to a poetic
pantheism and Savonarola represented an ethical
ideal and a political principle." All this skeptical
""Italian Romance Writers" : Brentano's. 1906. New York.
"The remark of Kennard, with regard to the pantheism of
Saint Francis, needs to be rightly understood. Certainly, it would
be simply absurd to assert that the Saint of Assisi did ever
imagine to identify the totality of being with God, or to deny
the personality either of God or of man. The one-substance
pantheism of Spinoza, the materialistic pantheism of Strauss or
142

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
tolerance and this semi-pagan worship of beauty
in its many aspects comes to the modern Italian
as a tendency. In the higher classes this ten
dency is to accept scientific positivism, and, in the
lowest, the tendency is to superstition.
Do we wish to understand Italian people still better?
Let us consider some of the manifestations of their spirit,
art, literature, and music. Each one of these tells us that
their spiritual instinct is very weak and their moral sense
almost undeveloped. Glance at their literature. In vain
we would seek in it that religious element which is so
abundantly manifested in the history of English letters.
If we analyze the greatest Italian literati what do we
find? The lofty muse of Petrarca is more familiar with
Plato than with Christ. Boccaccio, the father of Italian
prose, couples with the highest pathos the coarsest licen
tiousness. His "Decamerone" is as free from restraint
and as sensuous as if Christianity had not intervened
between the fourteenth century and the Greek mytho
logical world. Poliziano, like all the Humanists, is pa-
ganly sensualist both in mind and heart. Ariosto, wholly
absorbed by the epic spirit of chivalry, is not concerned
at all with religion and morals. In his "Orlando Fu-
rioso" heaven is quite concealed behind the sepulcher and
God is hidden from the world. Macchiavelli, the prince
of Italian statesmen, exalts paganism over Christianity.
Guicciardini, the Florentine historian, formulates the
the idealistic pantheism of Schelling and Hegel were quite for
eign to the theosophical conceptions of Francis. Yet it is true,
on the other hand, that nature spoke to him with such a tremen
dous force of God and he beheld the image of the Creator so
luminously reflected in the creatures that his mystical enthusiasm
seemed almost to represent God as the all-person, absorbing the
world into Himself. 143

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
principle of individual egotism. Cellini, the bold writer
and unrivaled goldsmith, does not acknowledge any other
moral authority than his own will. He is a bully, a liber
tine, almost a brigand and assassin.
Coming to modern times we realize that faith and
moral sentiment are absent from Carlo Goldoni, Vittorio
Alfieri, Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi, Giuseppe Giusti,
and the other literary geniuses. The great tragedian
Alfieri, for instance, is fiery, disinterested, often gener
ous; his passion for freedom is as strong as his hatred
for tyranny, but he is at the same time a seeker of love
adventures and hopelessly perverse. Foscolo is a vig
orous, independent, tempestuous character; as a writer
and patriot he is undoubtedly a noble figure, but morally
he is extremely weak. Sceptic, the slave of physical as
well as intellectual passions, he led a faulty and extrava
gant life. The great and unhappy Leopardi is compelled
by his bodily sufferings to be negative, pessimistic and
selfish. He ignored eternal order and scoffed at the
noblest human virtues, affections, and aspirations.
Where is, then, the religion of the Italian spirit? The
conspicuously Christian characters are exceptions:
Dante, Michelangelo, Tasso, Mazzini and a few others.
The men controlled by a deep sense of duty and a sin
cere Christian morality, as Giuseppe Parini and Niccolo-
Tommaseo, the truly religious spirits as Alessandro
Manzoni, the candid and innocent figures, as Silvio Pel-
lico, the devout Catholics as Giacomo Zanella, are rare
cases. An utter lack of appreciation, or even positive
contempt for religion and Christian morals characterizes
the greatest part of contemporary literature and poetry.
The majority of the modern Italian writers have either
cast aspersions upon or undervalued Christian religion.
144

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
It is generally known how bitterly Giosue Carducci,
the greatest of the modern poets of Italy, has denounced
the papal Church. To him the Papacy is "the shame of
the centuries, risen from the wicked embrace of Peter
and Caesar." In his ode, "Aspromonte," he further
wishes that "liberty, avenger of human thought, had
thrown down the false chair of the successor of Peter."
But unfortunately Carducci (and so most of the intel
lectual classes) have fallen into the serious mistake of
confounding the Catholicism of the papal Church with
the Christian religion; hence his vituperation of Chris
tianity. To him Christianity is synonymous with spirit
ual tyranny and social decay. In his poem, "Alle Fonti
del Clitunno," he sings :
Rome no more goes forth in triumph, for a Gali
lean of blonde hair has ascended the capitol ; into
her arms he has thrown a cross and said : "Bear
it and serve." . . . Farewell, Semitic God,
crucified Martyr, thou crucifiest men and defilest
the air with thy sadness.
Again, if Carducci, the national poet, is a free thinker,
Gabriele D'Annunzio is, in his turn, the poet of pagan
refinement and sensuousness. In his "Laus Vitae" he
wishes that "the cross of the Galilean may be thrown
into the dark recesses of the capitol and His reign in the
world ended for ever."
O, Galilean, he adds, thou in thy paradise art
worth less than Ulysses in Dante's Inferno. The
anchor which descends into thy waters is of no
avail to us. He who puts his trust in thee does
not value himself.
Mario Rapisardi sings social revolution. To him re
ligion is but a "venal mystery," and in his ode, "XX Set-
145

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
tembre," he expresses the ardent desire that "Italian peo
ple of the third Italy dispel the phantoms of religion and
reign in the place where once Peter and Caesar reigned."
Giuseppe Chiarini, in his preface to the work of Car
ducci, writes thus :
We are not Christians any longer, we are pa
gans. Our paganism is not only the revengeance
of earth over heaven, not only the abolition of the
whole medieval darkness of Christianity, but the
serene and fully satisfied possession of earthly
life.
Yet again. On the poems and writings of the gloomy
Arturo Graf there is not a ray of Christian sunshine.
The audacious paganism and immorality of the first
poems, "Posthuma," of Olindo Guerrini, are well known.
The sorrows of the poor and social injustice compel
Madame Ada Negri to utter the word of desperation.
The abundant vitality of the poetry of Aurelio Costanzo.
Giovanni Marradi, Enrico Nencioni, Alfredo Baccelli, is
mostly lacking in religious inspiration. The poets of
hope and faith, as Antonio Fogazzaro, Enrico Panzacchi,
Madame Alinda Brunamonti, are only drops within an
immense ocean.
Likewise the novelists and writers Giulio Barrili, Sal-
vatore Farini, Edmondo De Amicis, Luigi Capuana, Gio
vanni Verga, Marco Praga, Carlo Butti, Alberto Mario,
Luciano Zuccoli, Ugo Oietti, Madame Matilde Serao,
Madame Grazia Deledda, are more or less wanting in
religious ideality. The religious, ethical, and mystic ele
ments which so strongly influence English, French, a-d
Russian literature are quite foreign to their world. Fo
gazzaro is the only novelist who seems aware of the
existence of a religious reality, the problems of which
146

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
are closely connected with the destinies of man and man
kind. Italian literati, as a whole, are realists, often in
deed marked by pronounced atheistic tendencies.
Thus it is not an exaggeration to affirm that the de
votion and mysticism of the Italian characters of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are like an oasis in a
vast desert. Christian faith, which has so strongly in
fluenced the thought and national life of other peoples,
for instance, the Anglo-Saxons, has no place in either the
individual or collective life of the Italians. They them
selves lack faith ; and that is the simple reason why faith
has no place in their literature.
Not only literature, but also other productions of the
Italian genius are lacking altogether in religious inspira
tions. If we only glance at Italian art we realize again
their religious deficiency. We need only compare the
ideal of man as expressed by the greatest representatives
of Italian and German-Dutch art, and we will readily
observe the diversity of the two races and their religio-
moral spirit.
What a gulf indeed between the psychico-moral char
acters expressed in the art of Raffaello and that of Durer
and Rembrandt! Raffaello typifies perfection and har-
money of form. His figures are as serene as a Greek
goddess and, like the same, exuberant with life, healthy,
fresh, soft and voluptuous. They diffuse round them
selves a strong breath of earthly and corporal happiness.
They seem as if they were satisfied with their own beauty
and health, absorbed by the present life and its delights,
not preoccupied with anything that might disturb se
renity of spirit or poison the pleasures of time.
It is not so with Durer and Rembrandt. Their art
speaks a more rude and sincere language. In their Ma-
147

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
donnas and portraits we find little to charm the eye.
Their bodies are lacking in the symmetry of the Italian
master. There is not in them his Olympic serenity nor
his freshness of flesh, and their faces usually appear
thoughtful, sad, and as if oppressed by life.
Where is, then, the secret of the beauty and greatness
of their art? It is wholly internal, not external. It is in
the expression more than in the forms, in the soul rather
than in the body. That art reflects the deep genius and
strong character of Northern races. There is in it the
soul of peoples overwhelmed by metaphysical and spirit
ual problems, preoccupied more with the inward than
outward world, valuing intellectual and moral perfec
tion more than physical beauty. Duress and Rem
brandt's figures breathe not pleasure, but strength, not
happiness, but labor and virtue. Thus, while Raffaello
loves art as a form of the "beautiful" and a means of a
purely esthetic enjoyment, to Durer and Rembrandt, on
the contrary, art is one of the forms of "good" and an
instrument of spiritual perfection. Raffaello's ideal is
the man beautiful, happy, thoughtless ; Durer's and Rem
brandt's is the man honest, laborious, pensive, believing
in the good.
We shall reach the same conclusion if we look at the
Italian soul as reflected in their music. Among arts none
is so expressive of a people as their music. Music is
capable of giving form to those sentiments and affections
which the word can express only imperfectly. Music is
the channel through which flow the most intimate
thoughts, the deepest emotions of the individual and,
consequently, of his race. It springs from the inner
most soul of a people.
Well now, what is the music of Scarlatti, Pergolesi,
148

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Cimarosa, Paisiello, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and other
Italian masters ? It is only melody, plastic beauty, form.
Out of hundreds of Italian musicians Palestrina, Cher-
ubini, Spontini, Rossini (only at times), Verdi and
Boito are, perhaps, the only ones who possess a real
artistic inspiration and are prompted by true artistic
ideals. It seems as if Italians are unable to free them
selves from the matter and formalism and attain to the
heights of the ideal. Seldom has their music a high
moral significance and incarnates an idea. The inner
psychological world, the realm of the spirit which Bee
thoven so powerfully expressed, are foreign to them.
Their fancy is brilliant, their creative impulse very fec
und, their melodies flow clear, fascinating, often elegiac-
ally touching, but, with a few exceptions, they are lack
ing in truth, deepness, and force. Their melodic richness
fails, very largely, to be coupled with truth of expression,
strong dramatic sentiment, poetic ideality, delicacy and
chastity of inspiration, and technic knowledge.
How different, indeed, German music, which, with
Handel, Bach and Haydn is an art of faith and of spirit
ual combat ; it is inner sentiment and thought, philosoph
ical meditation and poetical psychology with Beethoven,
Weber, Schubert, Schuman, Liszt and Brahms. Italians
could give the world such masterpieces of gaiety, grace
fulness and brilliancy as the "Barbiere di Siviglia,"
"Norma" and "Lucia," but they were quite unable to con
ceive the mysticism, reflexiveness and austere grandeur
of Bach's passion music, the ideal force and spirituality of
Beethoven's symphonies and sonatas, the transcendent
romanticism of Wagner's operas. Don't expect them to
understand the infinite sadness of Beethoven's "Moon
light Sonata," or the indescribable pathos of his "Sonata
149

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Appassionata," or the heartrending grief of his "F Major
string quartet." In brief, German music is the art of
intellectual and spiritual expression, whereas with Ital
ians it is, more or less, a sensual appeal.
******* The absence of any serious Italian devotion is further
shown by the extreme lack of appreciation of spiritual
values and ethical influences on the part of the modern
historians, thinkers and sociologists. The attitude of
Italian writers toward the problems of the spirit is
marked by the deepest indifference. Within the last fifty
years a considerable number of Italian thinkers set them
selves to investigate the various phenomena and facts of
human conscience, but they put entirely aside those con
cerned with religious sentiment as though they were of
no importance at all.
Most of the historians have considered any religious
treatment useless or, at least, indiscreet, classifying it
among the matters for theologians. A great many others
have made history consist wholly of politics, and have
quite neglected the religious element, it seeming to them
that religious ideals and their manifestations in history
have no relation to politics.
Look, for instance, at the dealing of Italian historians
with the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth cen
tury. Indeed there is none who can fail to realize the
immense importance, both religious and political, of the
new German movement. It was one of the most pro
found and solemn revolutions in the history of human
thought and conscience. Religious freedom, national
conscience, in brief, the whole modern life, dates from
that great event. Raffaele Mariano did not exaggerate
when he wrote that the Reformation, together with the
150

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
coming of Christianity, constitute the most supreme and
decisive moments in the life of the peoples, throughout
history. Historically speaking, moreover, the Reforma
tion filled the whole sixteenth century. The rivalry be
tween the dynasties of Austria and France, the rise of
the independent Netherlands, the civil wars of France,
the ascendancy of England, the decay of Spain, the servi
tude of Italy, the new greatness of Germany, the spirit
prompting modern culture, in brief, all the salient facts of
modern history, rise and flow from the politico-religious
revolution of the 16th century.
Yet the history of the Reformation has been but little
studied in Italy. With the exception of the book by
Ricotti,1 the notes by Comani,' the work of Cappelletti,*
and a few other short essays and lectures, there is noth
ing to be found in Italian literature illustrative of this
great and eventful era. Rightly Masi* remarks, that it
seems as if Italian learned men get angry in having to
talk or write about it, as if it were but an indiscreet
curiosity. The flights, exiles, prisons, tortures of so
many illustrious persons are to them but pitiful stories,
on which one can even be silent. Strange to say, Italians,
if they wish to know something concerning the history
of the Reformation, are compelled to look for it in works
by foreigners, who mostly write polemics in behalf of
Protestantism or Catholicism, and very seldom judge the
matter from purely historical and objective criteria.
What we have said about the history of the Reforma-

""Della Rivoluzione Protestante" : Loescher. Torini. 1874.
'"Sulla Riforma Protestante": Appunti. Bergamo. 1892.
*"La Riforma." Bocca. 1912.
*"La Riforma in Italia": Conferenza (La Vita Italiana nei
500). Treves. Milano. 1894. 151

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
tion holds true for religious studies and the history of
Christianity in general. There is almost no trace in Italy
of the religious activity of England, Germany, and the
United States. Life and things spiritual meet there with
an appalling indifference. Ruggiero Bonghi, Raffaele
Mariano, Alessandro Chiappelli, Baldassarre Labanca,
and several others, have deeply deplored the neglect of re
ligious study in Italy, where this study is so urgently
needed, not only for the sake of modern culture, but for
the spiritual life and liberty of the country. Writing in
the "Cultura," Bonghi remarked in the most pathetic
strain, that in Italy those who have read the whole New
Testament in the Italian language are no more than
twenty ; those who have read it in Latin are scarcely ten,
and those who have read it in its Greek original, in
cluding the clergy, are perhaps only five. . .
Raffaele Mariano, fifteen years ago, rightly complained
of the fact that at the University of Naples, with its
5000 students, it was impossible to gather one per cent of
them, in order that the teaching of the history of Chris
tianity might be imparted with a certain appearance of
decency. While in Germany and England, writes Prof.
Chiappelli, the background and the intonation of
scientific conscience is substantially religious,
among us Italians two capital errors (not the least
of the causes of our moral decay) delay not only
the solution, but even a serious and scientific con
science of religious problems. On one side the
rigid intolerance of those who do not think nor
desire that religion should be studied with scien
tific method, and, on the other, the light indiffer
ence of many, who, despising all forms of religious
152

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
life, do not see its historical and ideal importance
and, accordingly, obstruct the slow, yet fecund
conquests of historical science in this noble field.1
Again he says:
It is strange that while every cultured person
in Italy would not deem it quite permissible to
ignore all that which has been said on the his
torical reality of Beatrice and Laura, very few
are those who care to know, even only as a literary
news, how many are the writings from which the
Canon of the New Testament results, or to have
a precise knowledge of what historical criticism
has said about the authenticity of the Letters of
St. Paul, or the relations of the Synoptical Gos
pels to the fourth one.'
Mariano adds :
Energy of thought, rigorous logic, straightness
and sincerity of soul seem to be today appre
ciated less than anything else. This lack of ap
preciation extends to a pure and living religion,
which, not wishing to disregard the exigencies of
intellect, appeals to philosophical reason and
theological research. We Italians, both of the
clergy and laity, abhor any enlightened form of
religion more decidedly than other peoples.
As Straus once designated us, we still are swing
ing between superstition and incredulity, except
that very often we welcome both at once. Be
tween those whose religion consists in placing
themselves blindly in the hands of the pope, or, at

""Nuove Pagine Sui Cristianesimo Antico" : Firenze. Le Mon-
nier. 1902.
"'Saggi e Note Critiche" : Bologna. Zanichelli. 1895.
153

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
most, in believing in the miracles of Madonnas
and Saints, to whom they bring votive gifts in
order to obtain graces, and those, on the other
hand, who believe in nothing but what concerns
the material world and their own appetite, and
blindly swear by them, the difference, if we ex
amine it well, is rather in the grade and the mode,
than in the substance.
It is true, however, that in recent times have not
been wanting in Italy, in both the laity and the clergy,
men who have taken an active part in the modern re
vival of religious thought. None can deny that Father
Savi,1 Monsignor Talamo,2 Father Semeria, Rev. Prof.
Minocchi, Don Romolo Murri, and, among the laity,
Gaetano Negri, Raffaele Mariano, Antonio Fogazzaro,
Prof. Alessandro Chiappelli, Prof. Baldassare Labanca,
to cite only some, have done well in religious study and
enthusiasm."

"Father Savi, a Barnabite priest, with an honest and sensitive
Catholic conscience, has been one of the first Italian clergymen
to acknowledge and appreciate, without too many reservations,
the value of historical criticism. In his book, "Delle Scoperte e
Dei Progressi Realizzati nell'Antica Letteratura Cristiana"
(Siena. 1893), he rightly rebukes his fellow-believers for their
cursing critical science and keeping far from it as though from
a devilish work. In his "La Dottrina Dei Dodici Apostoli.
Ricerche Storiche" (Roma. 1893.), he has shown an extraordi
nary maturity of studies and wealth of knowledge.
"Among the Italian clergy who, in recent times, distinguished
themselves in the field of knowledge, a notable place belongs to
Monsignor Talamo, author of several valuable works of historico-
philosophical and philosophico-religious character. "Le Origini
del Cristianesimo e il Pensiero Stoico" (Roma. 1892.) is doubt
less the most powerful of his books.
"Even Don Romolo Murri, who, in the second and third vol
umes of his "Battaglie d'Oggi," calls the attention «f the readers
154

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
It is gratifying to note the solicitude and, what is still
more remarkable, the independence and honest liberty of
mind with which some of them have pursued all kinds
of studies biblical, ecclesiastical, even political and so
cial, thus showing to the Italian clergy the highest ideals
to which they should rise. The fact that they are Roman
Catholics makes their discussion of the most delicate
questions, such as the rights of science, the present con
ditions of Christian life, the origin of Christianity, and
the synoptic question, all the more remarkable, when
breadth of view and critical ability were formerly un
known in the field of papal Catholicism.
This is not all, for, in due time and place, when it is
meet and right, they have not been afraid to appeal to
the authority of the most suspected among the authors,
as Reuss, Keim, Hingelfel, and even Renan and Har-
nack. What is still more singular and enigmatic is the
fact that, before the merciless crusade of Pius X, a
to the deficiency of Italian religious culture and the falsity and
other defects of Italian Christian life, hints, in his fourth vol
ume, to an initial religious awakening in Italy. He records,
first of all, the efficacious work of his scholarly friends, G. Seme
ria, S. Minocchi and A. Chignoni. Then he mentions A. Fogaz
zaro, A. Conti and R. Mariano, who, in various ways and with
different purposes, have called the attention of the public to the
religious problems. Of P. Genocchi, E Battaglia, G. Bonaccorsi,
Fracassini, the two Mercati and E. Vercesi he says that they have
discussed, on behalf of the public, matter of Biblical and religious
literature and have attempted to revive piety. He adds that a
group of young literati, among whom Zanetti, Rizzi, Mattei-
Gentili, Barbieri, Nediani and Misciatelli, besides recalling the
century and work of Saint Francis and talking of Christian art,
have acquainted the public with the religious poetry of Salvadori
and Salustri. Finally, he pays a warm tribute to other unnoticed
priests who are working and writing with the souls of ascetics
and the sacrifices of heroes. 155

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
great many of their books came forth sealed with the
"Imprimatur" of the most holy censors of the Curia!
The tragic end of these few apostles, who have so
nobly and generously attempted to restore to Italy
culture, conscience, and life, is known. Yet it is our
firm conviction that not all their seeds of a renewed
spiritual faith have been sown in vain.
To go back to the point, the above-mentioned clergy
men and a few other names which could be added, form
only a nucleus of scholars who stand out as an oasis in
the midst of the immense desert of the ignorance of
Italian Catholic clergy. Doubtless a small band, how
ever valiant it be, is quite inadequate to counterbalance
the inaptitude of the great majority. The wanting, on
the part of the Italian clergy in general, of spiritual vir
tues, and of such degree of education as is necessary to
exert a beneficial influence and regulating authority over
the ethical forms and the relations of social life is a sad,
deep wound which the activity of a few men, scholarly,
serious, conscientious, morally sound and robust, does not
suffice to heal.
What is the cause of such a spiritual lethargy in which
the Italian clergy languish? According to Raffaele
Mariano, the principal reason for it is to be found
in that rigid and empty Catholic unity which we
Italians exalt as a supreme prerogative and a di
vine privilege; whereas, it is that same unity
which, in suppressing by force every difference
and every contrast, has necessarily led to stagna
tion, drowsiness of the spirit, extinguished a liv
ing and sincere faith and dried up the roots of
energies, both ideal and practical."
""II Cristianesimo nei Primi Secoli": Opere (Vol. IV, p. 364).
156

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
How humiliating and discouraging, in this respect, is
the comparison between Italy and France, a nation
usually called unbelieving! . . . Religion and its his
tory form a great part of the intellectual and scientific
activity of France. The "College de France," the
"Faculte de Theologie Protestante," the "Ecole des
Hautes Etudes," and even the "Faculte des Lettres" of
Paris, where religion is taught, bear witness to this.
The several religious reviews, among which the uni
versally known "De I'Histoire des Religions," published
by Jean Reville ; the Protestant "Revue Chretienne," and
other Catholic reviews show a living French interest in
religious culture. Thus, in spite of Voltairrianism,
Frenchmen do not fail to appreciate the constructive and
renewing power of religion. There is, in France, a life
of soul and an activity of faith and of religious thought.
To what is such a French awakening due? Again it
is Raffaele Mariano who answers :
It is due to the fact that France has never, as
has Italy, shut herself entirely within the papal
and Jesuitical pale. Albigenses and Calvinism,
Huguenots and the organization of the Reformed
Church, Jansenism and the men of Port Royal,
the secular ecclesiastical Gallicanism and the
Protestant school of Strasburg, have been so
many vehicles for the transfusion of living ele
ments into the old religious conscience of French
men."
******* Italian unconcernedness with religion is further shown
by the attitude of the modern sociologues of Italy. If
we read the Italian works dealing with social problems,
""II Cristianesimo nei Primi Secoli" (p. 365).
157

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
we realize with a painful sense the complete absence of
the religious element. The modern Italian sociologues,
as usual, keep pleading for the uplifting and strengthen
ing of the character of the popular classes, for correct
ing their habits, exciting and cultivating the noble and
generous sentiments of the heart, giving back to the mul
titudes the dignity and independence of life and like
things ; but what are the means suggested to the attain
ment of this end? Schools, intellectual education, tech
nical knowledge, science, art, and the like. That is all.
There is no concern with the moral elevation of classes,
and the most efficient element in it, viz., religion. It
seems that nobody even suspects that religion is the key
for the solution of the social problem.
It is equally so, for instance, with Pasquale Villari,
the author of "Lettere Meridionali," in which he pre
sents an appalling spectacle of the social degradation of
Southern Italy. To free the oppressed and initiate so
cial justice in Southern Italy, this is the ideal that the
illustrious historian proposes to the nation. But the
means discussed as leading to the high goal consist in
practical measures, all, more or less, of an external and
material nature. Education, labor, industrial and com
mercial activity are treated at length. But all reference
to religion is lacking. In vain one would seek to learn
what the writer thinks of the relation of religion to the
social problem. There is not a word pleading for a re
ligious renewal, a reform of the spirit and morals, a
building up of the conscience and character of the masses.
Villari acknowledges, with Tocqueville, that two things
make people accomplish great deeds: religion and pa
triotism. But then he hastens to add that religion may
be said to be almost extinguished in Italy, that it is either
158

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
superstition or a traditional habit, not a living faith.
There he stops, without occupying himself further with
the matter. He is satisfied with stating that Italian
religious sentiment is entirely corrupt, yet he does not
tell us anything as to the necessity or convenience of
correcting and strengthening the religious sense of the
Italians. He expresses no opinion as to whether or not
it is worth while for Italians to purify their religious
conscience and reconstruct it in the integrity of its moral
elements. He resolves the religious problem in Italy by
denying the existence of a religious conscience altogether.
Thus, he seems to raise the state of the moral dissolu
tion of conscience in Italy to, the degree of a system, a
theory, a rational doctrine.
Still more blind than Villari to the light and power of
the religious ideal is Filomusi Guelfi. In his various
philosophical and social writings he shows himself quite
unwilling to attribute any social influence to a reform of
religious conscience. He thinks that religious sentiment
concerns only the individual conscience and does not
touch society." He proposes, moreover, the classic re
construction of the State, as a fact capable to deliver
Italy from all difficulties. He pretends that the State,
through its political action, can substitute the religious
ideal and, accordingly, create within the nation the con
sciousness of a historical mission. Such ideas are shared
by De Zerbi, who further maintains that religious belief
is not only destitute of any influence over the life of the
peoples, but that religion and civilization are radically
opposed. Now let us listen to the gospel preached by Nicola

"See "Giornale Napoletano di Filosofia" : April, 1885.
159

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Marselli.1 He thinks that it is quite useless to talk any
longer about religion in Italy, and pleads that Italians,
stopping forever the various disputes on faith, theology,
Christianity, either materialized or spiritualized, papal
or reformed, old or new, should plunge into and
strengthen themselves in the pure and fresh springs of
science and philosophy. Pledged to new conquests of
scientific spirit and wholly immersed in the progress of
philosophical work, Italy, he says, shall attain to new
destinies. While Filomusi Guelfi substitutes for religion
patriotism and State, Marselli substitutes for it science;
both, however, consider religion as something of negli
gible value.
Still more radical than Marselli is the Hegelian Pas-
quale D'Ercole.2 In the first volume of his work, "Con
tradictions and Groundless Demonstrations of Theism,"
he sets out to show that all the proofs in behalf of the
existence of God and the incorporeity and immortality
of the soul, upheld by Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas,
and the modern theists, are fallacious. According to
him, Christian philosophic theism, in behalf of which the
fathers of the Church wrote their inspired homilies, the
doctors of the Middle Ages sharpened at the whetstone
of a rigorous school their syllogisms, and some Italians,
as Rosmini, Gioberti, and Mamiani, took their pens, is
only a dead and buried theory. The only thing which is
living today is the potency of the Hegelian idea.
We come to the same conclusion if we analyze the
other productions of the present intellectual movement

""La Scienza Della Storia" : 3 volumes ; Loescher. Torino.
1883. ""II Teismo Filosofico Cristiano" : 3 volumes ; Loescher. Tor
ino. 1884. 160

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
in Italy. Thus in the "Vita Moderna Degli Italiani,"1
by Senator Angelo Mosso, we may read masterful chap
ters on the complex activities of modern Italian spirit
and life, but seldom do we meet anything as to the re
ligious nature of Italians. Whatever is concerned with
religion is excluded from the field of treatment and dis
cussion as a superfluity.
Loria, Ferri, and a few other sociologists have, here
and there, in their works, faced the problem of Chris
tianity and Catholicism, but mostly with a phenomenal
superficiality. As to Labriola, he attempts, in the three
volumes of his "Saggi," on the materialistic conception
of history, an explanation of the origins of Christianity,
addressing himself to the study of German Protestant
criticism, especially of the Tubingen school.
Likewise Gugliehno Ferrero, Roberto Ardigo, Bene
detto Croce, Enrico Morselli, great as they are in the
historical, philosophical and critical field, have failed,
more or less, to give religion and spiritual life the im
portance which they deserve.
******* A further striking example of Italian lack of religion
has been afforded by the present world-war. In other
countries, in England, for instance, and so also in Bel
gium and France, the most tragic of all wars has been
accompanied by a remarkable revival of religious senti
ment. We have witnessed, in England, a great national
mission of repentance and hope; we have heard both
bishops of the Church and statesmen pleading for a
spiritual preparedness of the nation and for the necessity
to fight egotism, sin, and all forms of evil more ardently
than the political and unspiritual enemies. The leaders
"Milano. Treves. 1906. 161

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
of the church and state have sought victory rather in
the faith than in arms. Their appeals have not been
made in vain. We have read about men and women
of all classes responding generously to the call and try
ing to draw nearer to God, in the spirit of penitence and
renewed Christian devotion.
Even in France, there have been encouraging signs of
a renewed interest in things religious. Since the begin
ning of the war the Roman Catholic Church has been
presenting to the French soldiers and people a more vital
and evangelistic message than ever before; and indeed
the French have welcomed it.
Nothing like that has taken place in Italy. The sim
ple people of the villages have had recourse, it is true,
to the Virgin Mary, the Saints, the Holy Souls in Purga
tory, but the nation, as a whole, has not been religiously
moved. The men of the upper classes have shown them
selves united in the natural religion of the fatherland and
duty, but not in the cult of the supernatural. Super
natural religion has utterly failed to show itself alive.
Naturally all this, besides bearing on the lack of faith
on the part of Italians, evidences also the utter spiritual
and moral inefficiency of Roman Catholicism upon the
national life of Italy.
Such are the Italians, as we have seen them in their
history, literature, art, and thought — a people religiously
indifferent and morally weak. No wonder that they are
not and cannot be reached by Protestantism. The con
version of an individual man, or of a people, from one
form of religion to another presupposes a great strength
and seriousness of character as well as a deep interest in
162

Protestantism and the Latin Soul

religion and its problems, an intense zeal for the culture
of spirit and the deepening of faith. This the Italians do
not possess.
The absence of vigor in Italian character is strikingly
evidenced by the literary life of the Italian Renaissance.
"The literature of the Italian golden age, as
Symonds1 says beautifully, seems to have been
produced for and by men who had lost their
ethical and political conscience and had enthroned
an esthetical conscience in its room. Their re
ligious indifference is deadlier than atheism. Their
levity is worse than sarcasm. They fulfil the epi
gram of Tacitus, who wrote: "Corrumpere et
corrumpi saeculum vocant." Yet no one has
the vigor to be angry. Ariosto is playful, Aretino
scurrilous, Alamanni peevish, Folengo atrabilious.
The purely religious compositions of the period
lack simplicity and sincerity. The "Sacre Rap-
presentazioni" are sentimental and romantic. The
Christian epics of the Latin poets are indescrib
ably frigid; the "Laudi" are either literary or
hysterical, like Benivieni's praise of Christian
madness. The impertinent biographies of Aretino
pass muster for genuinely pious work with Vit-
toria Colonna. It is only in some heartfelt ut
terance of the aged Michelangelo, or in the holy
life of a Saint Antonino, or in the charity of Luca
della Robbia's mission to young Boscoli, or the
fervor of Savonarola's "sermons" that here and
there the chord of real religious feeling vibrates
(Second volume, p. 519).

\ \

"J. A. Symonds: "Renaissance in Italy." 7 volumes; London,
1875-1886. 163

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Again the great English scholar says:
Throughout the whole art and literature of the
epoch is diffused an agreeable air of quietude and
acquiescence, a glow of contentment and well being
which contrasts strongly with the tragic circum
stances of a nation crumbling into an abyss of
ruin. . . . The prevailing mood of artists
and writers was capable of sensuous depth as in
the "Baiae" of Pontano ; it was capable of refined
irony as in the smile of Ariosto; it was capable
of broad laughter as in the farce of Bibbiena; it
was capable of tenderness as in Aretino's
"Ragionamenti" and the Florentine "Capitoli" ;
but it was incapable of tragic passion, lyrical rap
ture, intensity, sublimity, heroism" (p. 521).
A true realization of the levity of the Italian spirit1
has been reached also by the French Paul Sabatier.
Italians, he writes in the preface of the Life of
St. Francis, see the forms and outlines of men
and things more than they grasp their spirit. What
they most admire in Michelangelo is gigantic
forms and noble and proud attitudes, while we,
on this side of the Alps, understand his secret
thoughts, hidden sorrows, groans, and sighs.
Do not ask them to understand the
pathos of things, to be touched by the mysterious
and almost fanciful emotion which Northern
hearts discover and enjoy in the works of Rem
brandt.
"Alfieri and Gioberti, however, considered Italians a strong
people. Also Sen. Mosso maintains that "the strength of will is
the psychologic characteristic of Italian people." His idea is
shared by the French Alfred Foullie. (Esquisses psychologiques
des peuples Europeens.) 164

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
The statements that Italians are lacking in vigorous
character, as well as in strong religious and moral prin
ciples, hold true in spite of the fact that Italy produced
men as Dante, Michelangelo, Bruno and Mazzini, in
whom one does not know whether to admire more vast-
ness of mind or strength, nobility and greatness of pur
pose. Such men are not the representatives of the Italian
race. They are not the common expression, but the
rare exception; not the Italian people, but the Italian
great solitaries. They all were profoundly out of har
mony with their times.
The character and faith which Italians have not mani
fested during the periods that marked the heights of their
civilization, they did not acquire afterwards nor do they
possess it today. The Italian peoples present themselves
more or less spiritually deficient. They have undeniably
the forms of Christianity, but are wanting in its spirit.
Their religious sentiment is very superficial. They lack,
strictly speaking, a spiritual consciousness. Most of
them who frequent the churches are not led there by a
living faith, a deep persuasion of the spirit and a genu
ine religious enthusiasm, but by the force of habit.
There are not a great many to whom religion is an inner
conscience of moral duty and a principle of spiritual life.
Generally speaking, the faith of the masses is mixed
with unconscious sentimentalism, with superstition and
gross materialism. They make the essence of religion
consist of conventional formalism and merely external
practices. The statements made by some writers about
there being Roman Catholic peoples "without religion" is,
to a great extent, true of Italians, as it is of Spaniards,
the Mexicans, the Latins of South America and other
peoples. 165

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
That "spirit and truth" of which Christ spoke to the
woman of Samaria, which is the soul of Christian wor
ship, is absent from the religion of four-fifths of the
Italians. This absence explains why the influence of
their religion upon their lives is usually so weak and
poor. It is quite astonishing, the facility with which the
majority of those Italians who call themselves Catholics
will pass from the church- to the wine-shop, from the
festival and procession in honor of the Blessed Virgin
Mary and other patron-saints to the basest cursing, to
drunkenness, strife and even homicide; from the holy
water to theft, "stiletto" and black hand. The degenera
tion of religious sentiment in the popular classes (which
is in proportion to their intellectual debasement) reaches
such a low ebb that thieves, brigands, and evil-doers of
various kinds will ask the Virgin Mary, through special
prayers, to prosper their business. The prisons of the
United States are crowded with Italian and other Cath
olics of like type, who furnish a frightful percentage to
criminality.1 "In the year 1916 the population of the United States was esti
mated at 102 millions, of whom 16 millions (that is, 15 per cent)
were Roman Catholics. According to the Official Penal Statistics
of the same year, out of 65,772 prisoners in the United States
31,513 (that is, 47.9 per cent) were Roman Catholics. This
means that the proportion of Roman Catholic criminality to
Roman Catholic population is higher than 3 to 1.
Again. In 1914, 1511 prisoners entered Sing Sing Prison of
New York, of whom 839 (that is, 55.22 per cent) were adherents
of Roman Catholicism. If one takes in consideration the fact
that the Roman Catholic population of New York is only one-
fourth of the total, he realizes that the percentage of criminality
among the Roman Catholics is simply striking. Of the said 1511
prisoners 349 were Italians, 134 Russians, 73 Austro-Hungarians,
50 Irish, 16 English, 6 Norwegians, 6 Swedish, 4 Danish, 3 Dutch,
2 Swiss. 166

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Turning then to the cultured classes, their religious
sentiment is exceedingly lukewarm, if there be any at all.
This accounts for the fact that religious indifference and
apathy toward the problems of the spirit are so widely
existent among them.
Castelar summarized the religious conditions prevail
ing in the Latin world thus : "Those who think neither
pray nor believe ; those who pray and believe do not
think."1 Indeed, there is a great deal of truth in the
remark of the Spanish scholar.
It seems incredible, yet it is but too true, that Italy,
which gave birth to Leo, Ambrose, Gregory the Great,
Gregory VII, Benedict of Nursia, Francis of Assisi,
Catherine of Siena, and Savonarola lost entirely, during
the Renaissance, her religious and spiritual conscience,
never to regain it. The people whose religious genius
created the Catholic Church and, through the Catholic
Church, saved Christian faith in the Middle Ages,
became afterwards the very people who was to ap
preciate less than any other the value of Christianity and
to feel least its power. Ever since the sixteenth century,
rare sparks have been bursting from the cold ashes of
Italian religious life. Nowadays in vain would one look
in Italy for traces of that living faith which inspired
Gregory the great and produced that ardent mysticism
which inflamed the soul of Francis of Assisi. During
the nineteenth century intellect awoke in Italy; but the
"Risorgimento" did not affect conscience. That divine
force in man as well as in society still slumbers.

"Emilio Castelar : "Old Rome and New Italy." Harper's. 1876.

167

CHAPTER V.
protestantism and latin psychology
Yet it is not only the lack of spiritual culture that
prevents Latin peoples from understanding Protestant
ism. It is, as we have already pointed out, their own
psychology that repels them, almost instinctively, from
it. They cannot help it.
We have seen that Protestantism is the religious ex
pression of the German race. It is a type, a system of
Christianity elaborated by the psychologic, ethic, and
social features of Germanism. Protestantism, saturated
with a free, critical, rationalistic spirit, austere in its
principles, rigid in its expression, is the genuine prod
uct of the German soul. It is, in a word, German Chris
tianity par excellence.
And this is the reason why Protestantism, if it satis
fies the religious instinct of Germans, does not and can
not equally satisfy that of Latins. Protestantism is too
much of an intellectual system to appeal to the Latin
masses. Multitudes of simple, uncultured men and
women find it impossible to make themselves at home in
a religious society that makes the acceptance of an elabo
rate rationalistic creed the condition of membership.
Baumgartner tells us that Schiller used to regard Cathol
icism as a religion for artists, and Protestantism as a
religion for druggists. Schiller meant to point out the
process of subtle reasoning, analyzing, and arguing
which the mind and conscience of a Protestant is called
to endure. Indeed Protestant Christianity could be de
fined as a scientific religious system: it is, consequently,
169

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
incomprehensible to Latins, who, being naturally imagi
native, are apt to understand Christianity rather under a
form of a religio-esthetic drama or a poetical mystery.
They, more than in the written Bible, wish and need to
read and know Gospel truths in the symbolism of wor
ship. To them the best books of religion are not elabo
rate theological treatises, but signs, music, sensuous
features. Sentiment is the supreme element in the religion of a
Latin. To the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon peoples, re
ligion is, first of all, an intellectual conception; whereas
Latins are naturally disposed to consider it rather as
"sentiment." To them religion is and should be some
thing which is felt, not spoken of. It seems as if the
German worships by his brains, the Latin through his
emotion. While a German, the more he reasons, the more he
feels the power of religious truth upon his soul; the
Latin, on the contrary, feels himself more strongly in
fluenced by the mysterious elements of Christianity, by
what is more intrinsically supernatural in religion. The
German, in his aspiration to God, is rather impatient of
the shadows of mystery, of intermediary powers, sym
bolical forms, ritualistic features ; he wishes to reach the
Eternal Reality directly. Mystery has no fascination
over him; it is rather the contemplation of truth that
wins and subjugates him. On the contrary, it is the
incomprehensible that effectively touches and excites the
religion of the Latin. It is not the critical, but the
mystical, sacramental religion that exercises a real and
effectual power over him. Symbolical representations
and ritualistic forms, which Teutons and Anglo-Saxons
regard as hindering the uplift of the soul to God, are the
170

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
very steps which lead the soul of the Latin to the same
God. Symbolism speaks to him with a tremendous force
of the inaccessible God and the supernatural world. Thus
we could say that the faith of the German and the
Anglo-Saxon soul is more mature and strong; that of
the Latin's is more simple and ingenuous.
Such sentimental form of Latin religion has been de
termined principally by the psychological structure of the
Latin peoples. But there are also other elements which
account for it, among them the intellectual conditions
prevailing in Latin countries. Sentimentalism among
Latin Catholics is, to a great extent, but the reflection
of their intellectual and civil conditions. The high per
centage of illiteracy in Latin countries is generally known.
This lack of intellectual and social education, besides
explaining the predominance of the sentimental element
within Roman Catholicism, with its tendency to super
stition, accounts also for some other facts connected with
the Roman Catholic system. The Roman Church, for
instance, is usually charged with being hostile to a
wider circulation of the Bible among her people. The
charge is true enough, yet very few seem to realize that
a popular circulation of the inspired Books would be
most unpromising, on account of the inability of the peo
ple to comprehend and appreciate it. Of what use, in
deed, would it be to put the Bible in the hands of the
people when 75 per cent would not know how to read
it, and perhaps no more than two or three in each thou
sand would know how to rightly interpret it? How can
the advocates of the so-called Evangelical religion ex
pect to see the Latin peoples approach for themselves to
the genuine and inexhaustible source of religious truth,
when they are unable to do so?
171

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
On account of their intellectual state the Latin masses
are prevented from reaching a personal comprehension of
religious truth. They need a guide to lead them by the
hand ; they cannot help relying on the teaching of some
one else. Here is the reason why it can be truly said
that the Bible of Roman Catholics is the word of the
priest. Here is also the reason why the Roman Catholic
masses do not appreciate the enjoyment of Protestant
individual freedom. They are more apt to receive the
light of truth and partake of spiritual life by submission
to authority than through personal liberty.
Among Latin peoples the principle of authority is more
strongly rooted than that of liberty. The great tradition
of authority, inherited from the Roman Empire, has been
kept noticeably alive among all Latin peoples, except the
French. They have been accustomed, through centuries
of oppression, religious as well as political, to reverence
authority, to submit even to the worst forms of despo
tism. This sentiment of authority, almost, so to speak,
natural to the Latins, accounts for the great stress which
they usually lay on the hierarchial elements of Christian
Church. It seems as if the Latin possesses the instinct
of rule, government, and organization. He cannot, for
instance, conceive a Christian Church without a strong
hierarchial system, any more than he can think of a soul
without a body.
Going back to the predominance of emotion in the
religion of the Latin soul, one cannot fail to realize that
it is a dangerous condition and one likely to lead to
credulity, superstition, and fanaticism. But the pre
dominance of intellectual interests in the religion of Ger
mans and Anglo-Saxons is not less free from abuse. It
leads to rationalism, an evil equally, if not more, injuri-
172

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ous than emotionalism. Rationalism holds exactly the
same relation to the Protestant conception of Christian
ity, as superstition does to the Roman Catholic. The
perfect ideal of Christianity, subjectively considered,
cannot result but from the equilibrium between the intel
lectual and emotional faculties in the spirit of the
believer. ******* No wonder then that Protestantism, a genuine German
emanation, is an absolute discordance with the spirit of
the Latin race. Protestantism, in its doctrinal maxims and
its moral principles, its worship, its whole atmosphere, is
a form of Christianity too austere for the Latin temper.
The pure religion of spirit, for which it pleads, is some
thing unsuited to them. Not to take into account the
other features of Protestant religion, look only at its
worship: such worship so rigid, so cold, appealing so
little or not at all to the senses and sentiment, can it meet
the exigencies of the warm, exuberant, artistic Latin
nature? Absolutely no. Michelangelo, the sovereign
artist and deep thinker, was perfectly right in asserting
one of the reasons that prevented Latins, and more par
ticularly Italians, from approaching the ideal of Protes
tant reformation to be their excessive love of art and
their eminently artistic instinct.
Therefore, when Protestants, considering the various
features of Roman Catholicism, for instance, the pomp
ous ritual of its worship, cry out against what they con
sider superstition, fanaticism, and idolatry,1 they are
"Idolatry, according to Carlyle ("Heroes and Hero Worship"),
is to be found, more or less, in all religions. He premises that
"Other religions are, like Christianity, forms of universal religion.
They have all had a truth in them, or men would not have taken
them up. They are an existence, more or less, troubled by the
173

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
right only to a certain extent. What to them appears as
a monstrous deformation of Christianity is often the
natural expression of the religious sentiment of the
Latin peoples. It was just this error which led Luther
to his exaggerated invectives against the Latin race and
civilization. He regarded the Southern civilization with
the eyes of a man of the North and, consequently, greatly
overdrew the representation of its vices. It is the same
misunderstanding which nowadays induces a great many
Protestants to go beyond the truth in the consideration of
Roman Catholicism. They judge it by an over-subjective
and one-sided criterion, and in consequence it appears to
them wrong in all and each of its features.
A bishop of the Anglican communion, while spending
a few days in Rome, entered the church of Ara-coeli,
mystery, august and infinite, which is at the bottom of the uni
verse." Then he continues : "Grand Lamaism, popery itself, in
terprets after their fashion, the sentiment of the divine; there
fore, popery itself is to be respected. While a pious life is
capable of being led by it, let it last as long as it can. What
matters if people call it idolatry? Idol is a thing seen, a symbol
It is not God, but a symbol of God. Is not all worship whatso
ever a worship by symbols, by idols or things seen? The most
rigorous Puritan has his confession of faith and intellectual rep
resentation of divine things, and worships thereby.
"All creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions that fitly
invest religious feelings, are, in this sense, idols — -things seen.
All worship whatsoever must proceed by symbols, by idols ; we
may say, all idolatry is comparative, and the worst idolatry is
only more idolatrous.
"The only detestable idolatry is that from which the senti
ment has departed, which consists only in ceremonies learned by
rote, in mechanical repetition of prayers, in profession of form
ula? not understood. The deep veneration of a monk of the
twelfth century, prostrated before the relics of St. Edmund, was
worth more than the conventional piety and cold philosophical
religion of a Protestant of today." 174

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
where, during the week following Christmas, little chil
dren use to address the Holy Child, lying in a beautiful
crib, with lovely poems, and then reverently kiss His
image. Sometimes grown-up persons join the children in
the devotion. The Anglican bishop who witnessed such a
spectacle wrote afterwards that he could not help being
strongly impressed and moved. He openly confessed
that homage so rendered which at another time would
have been considered by him as an act of idolatry, did
not appear so to him then. He added that in that mo
ment, within the sacred atmosphere of the church, he
felt quite sure that though he witnessed an act of material
and gross devotion, yet it was one accompanied with such
remarkable evidence of faith and emotion that it did
reach the heart of God quite as assuredly as did the
purest act of worship.
It is clear enough that it would be wrong to lay all
the responsibility for the corrupt practices of Roman
Catholics upon the church. The church is responsible,
but not to the whole extent. In this connection a great
truth is usually being forgotten, that it is not so much
the church which has formed the peoples as the peoples
who have shaped the church.
Consider, for instance, the worship of Mary, on ac
count of which the Roman Church is so frequently and
so fiercely assaulted by Protestants. That worship
sprang from the very soul of Latin peoples. Mary is
the creation of the people rather than of the church.
The worship of Mary may lack Scriptural foundation,
according to the strict rules of Biblical exegesis, but the
Latin heart and imagination see and feel what is lacking
in the Holy Writings, concerning the Mother of God.
The divine motherhood of Mary is enough for them.
175

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Protestants may denounce the worship of Mary as super
stitious and even derogatory to God, yet Mary does
touch the hearts and move the souls of the Latin peoples
and will continue to bring them to her divine Son.
Should one remove Mary, the Saints and other acces
sories from religion, the Latins would cease to under
stand it. Worship, without a rich and pompous cere
monial, is to them something almost void of meaning;
the church building itself, if there be not a profusion of
art, to them is incapable of breathing religion and de
votion; they would feel within its walls as though they
were in a cold and chilly place.
I do not believe, so says Raffaele Mariano, that
Italian evangelical buildings, which are so bare
and cold, and which look like places of public
meetings, and suitable for the discussion of
worldly and commercial matters, can attract a
people endowed with such a lively imagination as
Italians. The fact that the excessive formalism
of the Roman Catholic Church distracts and lulls
the spiritual energies, by pleasing the senses and
exciting fancy and curiosity, does not mean that
the church buildings should lack something ableN
to dispose souls to meditation, prayer and wor
ship; something to make them feel that they are
not in ordinary places, but in the houses of God.1
The German can find even a meeting house venerable,
bare and poor though it be, being able there or anywhere
to raise himself above sensible things, to concentrate his
attention upon the inward world and revive before his
own spirit the idea of God. But it is not so with the
Latin. He is impatient of cold lectures and meditations.

"R. Mariano : "II Pensiero Religioso in Italia." Firenze. 1891.
176

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
He does not know how to dissociate himself from the
exterior world. He cannot draw near God but by means
that appeal to his senses and arouse his emotions.
What a German considers only as accessory to wor
ship and at variance with it as a distraction of eyes and
spirit, to a Latin, on the contrary, is a necessity. It
seems as if Latin peoples are incapable of worshipping
God "in spirit." It seems that without the materializing
symbol they cannot raise themselves to God. Catholic
symbolism, which appears so material and sensual to the
Protestants, answers to an imperious need of their
hearts, it is the indispensable means to their spiritual
elevation. Symonds1 rightly asserts that:
Realism, preferring the tangible and concrete to
the abstract, the defined to the indefinite, the sen
suous to the ideal, determines the character of Ital
ian genius in all its manifestations. It consti
tutes the true note of their art and literature. It
leavened even their religion. We find it in St.
Catharine's visions, in the Stigmata of St. Fran
cis, in the miracle of Bolsena. Under its influ
ence the dogmas of the Church assumed a kind
of palpability. It was against Italian sensuous-
ness that the finer spiritual perceptions of the
Teutonic races rose in revolt, and the Italians,
who had transmitted their own religious forms to
Europe, could not understand the point at issue.
In conclusion, the Latin soul absolutely refuses to
adore God in the manner Germans and Northern peo
ples adore Him. Protestantism, by which the individual
is placed face to face with the Bible, without any other
"Symonds: "Renaissance in Italy" (Vol. II, p. 614).
177

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
testimony or stimulus but his own conscience, or any
other help than his own reason, is not made for the
Latins, or, rather, the latter are not made for the former.
Protestantism, saturated with rationalism and criticism, is
and will always be something unintelligible, cold, repel
ling to peoples whose soul yearns for an ingenuous and
simple faith and for the warmth of a sacramental re
ligion. Between Protestantism and the Latin soul there
is a great gulf fixed. To dream of making out of them
deep and sincere Protestants is to think the impossible.
It is as though one pretended that Cervantes or Manzoni
wrote with the same power as Goethe; that Gioberti
thought with the deepness of Kant and Hegel ; that Raf
faello or Velasquez painted the strength of soul and char
acter as did Durer; that Rossini composed music as
grave and solemn as that of Bach. It is as to pretend
that a luminous soul of the South change itself into a
pensive and gloomy being of the North.
A great many among the most prominent Latin writers
and thinkers of the nineteenth century perceived this
truth clearly. Chateaubriand, Montalembert, Lamennais,
and others in France; Manzoni, Rosmini, Gioberti,
D'Azeglio, Balbo, Mamiani, Tommaseo and the other
"Neo-Guelfi" in Italy, while trying to restore the religious
faith destroyed by the materialistic philosophy of the
eightenth century, saw, at the same time, the absolute
necessity of not repudiating the fundamental Catholic
doctrines, but only of purifying them of their supersti
tious elements and harmonizing them with the philosoph
ical and social principles of the new era.
Italy, rightly said Bettino Ricasoli (an enthus
iastic pleader for a religious reformation and, at
once, a man with a thorough knowledge of the
178

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Italian soul and tradition), cannot be Protestant.
By wishing to make her such, we will, on the con
trary, make her atheistic and increase that re
ligious carelessness and indifference which is the
worst of all evils.
This idea is not peculiar to Ricasoli ; but it is shared by
the most intelligent of the Latin world.
The Italian, remarks Enrico Nencioni,1 is nat
urally Catholic; and when he is not, he is either
indifferent or rationalistic; therefore, Protestant
ism among Italians has not nor ever shall take
root.
And Nicola Marselli' says :
Italy is not a ground favorable to an austere
and melancholic religion. Italians like a religion
without harshness, picturesque and rich in color
ing, artistic, spectacular, and in feasts.
Protestantism, adds the historian Comani,* is
not a doctrine to prove sympathetic to the Ital
ians, because it is too rigid and too contrary to
the external worship and to the artistic pomp
which Italians love so dearly.
Finally, also the Spanish Castelar,4 while exalting
Protestantism, yet is compelled to confess that:
It is true that Protestantism will always be re
pugnant to the nature of our race and the char
acter of our history.

"E. Nencioni: "Torquato Tasso" in "La Vita Italiana nei
Cinquecento." 3 volumes; Milano. Treves. 1894.
'N. Marselli: "Gli Italiani del Mezzogiomo." Roma. Som-
maruga. 1884.
"G. Comani : "Compendio di Storia." Firenze. Sansoni. 1901.
'E. Castelar: "Old Rome and New Italy." Harper's. 1887.
179

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
To all these thinkers and scholars echoes Prof. Gio
vanni Luzzi, who, though a strong upholder of the evan
gelical ideal, yet recognizes that the moral and spiritual
regeneration of Italy is not to be expected from a Pres
byterian or Congregational Church, but only from a
truly Christian "Episcopal" Church, for, the Episcopal
presentation of Christianity, on account of its Catholic
tradition, and its liturgy, is more congenial than any
other to the nature of the Latin race.1
What Ricasoli stated in regard to Italians, holds true
also not only in relation to Latins, but also of all those
peoples who, though ethnically belonging to different
races, as Hungarians, Poles, and Irish, yet religiously
have been identified, through secular traditions, with the
Latin form of Christianity, viz., Roman Catholicism.
One can perhaps destroy their Catholicism, but he can
not build in them anything else to take its place. It is
easier to make them unbelievers and irreligious than to
make them Protestants.

"G. Luzzi : "The Struggle for Christian Truth in Italy." Revell.
1913.

180

CHAPTER VI.
latin realization of the defectiveness of
protestantism.
Social and religious education, which a great many
Protestants urge as the necessary steps for the Protes-
tantization of Latin peoples, would not be enough to
make Protestantism acceptable to them. By being de
veloped intellectually and spiritually they would not be
come Protestants.
Doubtless there are not wanting within the Roman
Church persons with a deep religions consciousness,
prompted by a true Christian spirit and shaped after the
evangelical ideal. Yet among them those who are led to
an open profession of Protestantism are very rare. There
are to be found many who are, more or less, in sympathy
with it: but not to such an extent as to concern them
selves very much about it. They realize the deficiencies
of Protestantism. Their disappointment over papal
Catholicism does not make them less aware of Protestant
shortcomings. This explains how, for instance, Filippo Perfetti, the
very one who had found Romanism to be a phenomenon
analogous to the Islam, could proceed to weigh Protes
tantism and Catholicism in his balance and decide that
the latter was immensely superior to the former. "On
account of its subjectivity," he wrote:1 Protestantism is
immeasurably inferior to Catholicism. Protestantism
cannot absorb Catholicism, because it is not organic.
Catholicism, being divinely organic, is able to absorb
"F. Perfetti : "II Clero e la Societa." Firenze. 1862.
181

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Protestantism, which in its essence is too spiritual and
mystical. Catholicism is the man and the Church: the
man in the Church and the Church in the man, that is to
say, the man in union with Christ and in communion
with the Saints, and Christ manifested in him."
Also Ruggiero Bonghi, the warm admirer of the evan
gelical conscience of Northern European peoples, did not
fail to realize the shortcomings of Protestantism. He
seems to have been well acquainted with the fact that
Protestantism has been steadily sinking into a relentless
rationalism, tending to destroy the objective content of
faith. Repeatedly the great scholar and politician pointed
to the phenomenon of intellectual and spiritual disinte
gration among the adherents of the Protestant faith.
A further instance of this Latin realization of the
deficiency of Protestantism is afforded by Ercole Ricotti,
the Italian historian of the Protestant Reformation. He
acknowledges the greatness of the Protestant principle
of free examination and extols its beneficial influence in
the intellectual field; yet, at the same time, he seems
inclined to consider the same principle as not strictly
necessary in the religious field. He affirms that the effects
of the Protestant Reformation upon European civiliza
tion were moral and indirect, rather than religious and
direct, and that the immediate advantages brought by
Protestantism to the religious order were scarce, and
even disputable. Ricotti, who does not fail to acknowl
edge the historical justification of Protestantism, is, at
the same time, so well aware of its radical character that
he strongly pleads for a substitution of the misleading
term "reformation" with "revolution." And while on the
one hand he denounces papal Catholicism, on the other he
does, to a great extent, agree with Bossuet in inferring
182

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
from the doctrinal variations among Protestant bodies
the erroneous character of the Protestant system. Ricotti
further admits that the exercise of the Protestant
principle of free examination keeps awake and increases
the spiritual forces of the individual ; yet he also main
tains that it is very easy to abuse it, and that its abuse
leads to that blind sense of individualism which replaces
traditions, written laws, venerable customs, and fails
to utilize that which is great and beautiful in the past.
Even Raffaele Mariano, the merciless scourger of
Roman Catholicism, has unmistakably revealed his reali
zation of the defects of Protestantism.
It is a grevious wrong, he asserts, not to
recognize that the Protestant principle is, in con
clusion, the same principle on which Christianity
itself is based, namely faith concentrated within
the conscience, and the justification of man be
fore God sought directly, not through human
mediators, nor through external practices, but
through faith and an interior conversion of heart
and will. Thus the duty arises, for each indi
vidual, to know the truth, to penetrate deeply
into it and, in a certain way, to affirm and sanc
tion it. Unless the individual man, through his
free, subjective activity, appropriates to himself
divine truth in such wise as to feel it and carry it
within himself as something of his own, a true
Christian life cannot be formed and exist. This
is essentially the life of the spirit, which neither
extrinsic processes nor sensible and mechanical
practices are sufficient to kindle.
The most peculiar office of the Protestant Ref-
183

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
ormation is to have brought to light such evan
gelical exigence for the active participation of
the believer to the religious reality. And we
must be grateful to Protestantism for its having
practically realized it, by establishing free indi
vidual examination.
But the reformers, in the impetus of victory,
being satisfied with the affirmed liberty of the
Christian soul, did not sufficiently concern them
selves with the slide, to which their affirmation
opened the way. It is not maintained here that
they should have retaken by one hand what they
had let go with the other. Free examination is so
strongly inherent to the essence of Protestantism
that disowning it would have been, and would still
be, to Protestantism equivalent to self-destruc
tion. Yet there was a great difference between
suppressing liberty and surrounding it with the
necessary limitations lest it exceed and become
licentiousness and liberticide.
Evidently, if subjective liberty is essential to
the believer, objective truth is far more essential
to him. The word of Christ : "Ye shall know the
truth and the truth shall make you free" (John
VIII : 32) is, as His other words, divinely in
spired. To be free, above all things, truth is
necessary. But the fact that religious truth is
destined to be made personal and subjective by the
believer, does not imply that it is not, and must
not be, impersonal and objective in itself. Its
existence and legitimacy cannot depend on the
good will of single individuals. Left to the va
rious feelings, views and tendencies of individual
184

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
atoms, religious truth evaporates and vanishes. In
order that truth may be imparted to the individ
uals as something belonging to them, nay, of their
own, it must be and remain superior to and inde
pendent of themselves. Further, the very pur
pose of truth (which purpose consists in being,
among the other things, a bond between men, a
great social power and a reservoir of ideal and
moral energies) tells clearly that its content,
no matter under what form or by what means,
must have a universal value. This implies that,
beside and above liberty, there must be truth and
its tradition and, moreover, an authority incar
nating both ; there must be an organic institution,
deputed to keep the possession, even if it be only
evolutive and progressive, of religious truth.
Of course, when we speak of authority, we do
not mean to imply the necessity of an infallible
pope. In order that the eternal words of the
spirit, emanating from Christ, and the truths
which, as a derivation from them, have been
gradually revealed to the collective religious con
science, may be marked with such a character as
to make those words and truths known and know-
able to all, the living and universal tradition of
the Church, manifesting itself in its organic rep
resentation is sufficient. The "quod semper,
ubique, ab omnibus creditum," indicated by Vin
cent of Lerinos, as a criterion to fix true tradition,
is an ancient, but not disproved, doctrine. On
the basis of a divine objective truth, going back
to Christ and the Apostles, and ascertained and
kept by the episcopate, the life of the Christian
185

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Church supported itself during the early cen
turies. This order of truths was not clearly perceived
by the reformers. They thought that they had
accomplished everything by merely pointing to
the Bible. In their conceptions, religious truth
finds its warrant in Holy Scripture. This is the
source whence to draw the rule of truth and the
model of life. In the Bible there is, moreover,
the touchstone to decide whether the way in which
the Word of God is announced is the true and
salutary one.
On the other hand, the reformers, and, after
them, all the adherents to evangelical faith, add
that the Scripture, without the spirit, becomes
only a letter that kills. Holding the Scriptural
word as a mere external and immovable letter is
inconsistent with the essence of the Gospel. There
fore the Scriptural word is never to be disassocia
ted from the action of the spirit. It must be scrut
inized in its spirit and through its spirit. Only
when coupled together the Scriptural word and
the spirit can exert the efficacy divinely assigned
to theirk
Doubtless all this sounds very true, in abstract.
But a great effort is not necessary to realize that,
practically, the Evangelical Church, by thinking
so, made a wide opening to deviations and ex
cesses. Certainly without the Scripture, the New
Testament more especially, Christianity ceases to
exist. The Holy Gospels are the foundations of
Christian edifice, without which it crumbles to the
earth. It can and must also be admitted that he
186

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
who wishes to scrutinize and comprehend the
spiritual meaning of these documents cannot re
fuse the action of the spirit, nor undervalue it.
But the unavoidable process which has followed
from raising liberty to the place of an unique and
supreme principle could have been, without diffi
culty, foreseen. In fact it has happened, especially
in Germany, that liberty of examination has gone
so far in the exercise of its right as almost to
supplant the Bible and pillage the treasure of the
divine objective truths which are contained there
in, and are essential to Christianity. Since the
word of the Bible, being a letter that kills, is
powerless, and one must draw from the spirit,
nothing could prevent some from finding it quite
natural to raise themselves above the spirit and
catch reality directly. It has, besides, seemed
possible to them to withdraw entirely from the
historico-theological ground of Christianity, and
from the complex of its doctrines, or, what is the
same, from the movements and developments of
Christian conscience and life and their needs.
In other words, it has to a great many seemed
possible to consider such doctrines no more or less
than a heavy, useless train, or something impeding
and encumbering the free action and expansion of
the spirit. At this point, gradually, Strauss, and
more recently, Harnack, have arrived in Germany.
A like realization of the defects of Protestantism
prompts a powerful Mariano's" attack on Harnack.
Some remark, he writes, that Harnack, by his
*R. Mariano: "II Ritorno Delle Chiese Cristiane all'Unita
Cattolica." Opere (Vol. VII. Barbera. Firenze).
187

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
laying faith in Christ as the foundation of all
Christianity, logically wishes that the first and last
thing to which we must resort, is not the symbol
of the Apostles and its component parts (a mere
historical product to which men have gradually
added and which they have altered), but to the
person itself of Christ, His thought and words.
But to me such logic seems analogous to that of
the "four and four make eight," a logic simple and
good enough for the common business and inter
ests of life, but not for religion, which is some
thing more complex. It is true that the words of
Christ are the foundations of Christianity; yet
they do not integrate it. Beyond the words there
is their truth and their spirit. Of this Spirit
Christ said that He would come to lead Christians
into all truths (John: XIV and XV). What is
that Spirit of truth, which scrutinizes, determines,
fixes the profound meaning of the revelations of
Christ? According to Harnack, He is nothing.
To him spiritual working is something merely
historical and human. The Church, on the con
trary, rightly holds that the fact that the Spirit has
manifested Himself historically within her bosom,
and has revealed Himself gradually, in time, does
not destroy its true, holy, divine reality, at least to
that extent and measure in which it brings into the
clear light of knowledge those objective truths
which the Gospel contains under a virtual and, to
say so, latent state. It is maintained that the
unique duty of the Christian is to exercise faith in
the Gospel. It would certainly be anti-Christian
to say the opposite. Yet, are not the divinity of
188

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Christ, the Incarnation, Trinity in the Gospel?
Are they not derived from the very bosom of it?
These dogmas, though historically born and for
mulated, have their roots in something which does
not pass, in the eternal words and revelations of
Christ. If Christianity is to be consistent, the true logic,
namely that of Christianity itself, exacts that we
should not resort exclusively to the person and
words of Christ. When we, forsaking the spirit
of such words, put aside the truths which reside
therein, and the doctrines and dogmas which they
have generated, we are no longer within the realm
of logic.
Again : in studying the reasons for the moral influence
of the Papacy over hundreds of millions of Christians,
Raffaele Marino points once more to the faults of
Protestantism. He says :
The prerogative of the Papacy is to incarnate
Christian truth in an authoritative manner and, at
the same time, as an objective and historical entity.
Protestantism holds to the liberty of the Christian
soul as the foundation of religious life, whereas
papal Catholicism holds to the continuity and
authority of historical tradition. The former
wants faith to be a process moving from a free
inward act and effecting a living, personal relation
to Christ, and, through Christ, to God. The latter,
on the contrary, makes the possibility of faith and
the relation to Christ and God dependent on the
mediation of the Church. Thus, in the economy
of the redemption and salvation, the former
prompts and solicits the subjective activity of the
189

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
individual soul, whereas the latter opposes,
represses and deadens it. But, on the other hand,
in Protestantism, because of its constitutive prin
ciple of free examination, a centrifugal dash is
inherent as well as the tendency to an atomistic
disintegration. To many the exaggerated desire
of liberty seems to point, as its ultimate result, to a
Christianity dissolved into atoms and vanishing
into space. Were Christian truth really to end in
being nothing else but what it seems to this or that
person, it is clear that none could any longer tell
where the objective truth, which we must believe,
exists. In that case one does not know how an
intrinsic dissolution of Christianity could be pre
vented. Danger such as this is eliminated from
papal Catholicism. Herein faith has, as its con
tent, a universal object which individual con
sciences must accept, an object which is not the
product of any of them singularly taken, and it is
independent of and superior to any one. In the
papal system, the Church is the impersonal tradi
tion of divine truth, which she keeps and hands
down, thus preventing the aberrations and devia
tions of the individual. Briefly, Protestantism
seems to have come to the point of persuading
itself that Christ is enough to the efficacy of Chris
tianity, whereas Catholicism demonstrates that
without the Church Christ vanishes and disap
pears. Wherefore one understands why within
the former, because of its excessive, free and
unbridled thinking, there are uncertainties, insta
bility, and grievous vacillations ; whereas there is,
within the latter, firmness, stability, possession of
190

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
a truth not individual and subjective, but objective
and historical. A power such as this, besides
attracting, strengthening and comforting the weak
and timid ones, of whom the world is full, reas
sures even certain sound and strong minds, to
whom liberty appears beautiful and desirable pro
vided it does not hurt and destroy truth. Catholi
cism, though, by its rigidity, its firm and tenacious
unity of faith, its refusing to allow even the
slightest awakening of subjective conscience, may
lead to the death of the living and sincere faith, or
to the tepefying of all beliefs and convictions, yet
does not threaten to destroy the universal, objective
content of Christianity and, with it, its social and
historical efficiency.
Elsewhere Mariano remarks:
It is useless to dissimulate that the Papacy and
its Catholicism, because of the strength of tradi
tion and authority which they possess, shall ever
last as a counterbalance to the unlimited liberty
which springs from Protestantism, a counterbal
ance necessary to keep or reconstitute the equilib
rium in the world of Christian religion and life.
The greatest strength of Catholicism and the
Papacy springs from the nature of Protestantism,
partly from its weak . sides, but mostly from its
exaggerations and intemperance, for which it
would not be always easy to show the reasons and
the usefulness. Those excesses do not answer,
ordinarily, to the needs of conscience and of
faith, and spring only from the arrogance of a
haughty intent. Thus the Papacy, which stands,
191

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
as it is, incorrigible and impenitent, may well
repeat: "Salus ex inimicis." . . .
******* To Raffaele Mariano echo Professor Labanca and Mr.
Pietro Rampolla, the former of whom thinks that one
of the very reasons for the strength of papal Catholicism
lies in the weakness of Protestantism.
Variations and separations among Protestants,
he writes, are almost numberless. There are among
them more than 200 ecclesiastical denominations.
Nevertheless it cannot be reasonably affirmed that
there is no unity of any kind among Protestants.
Their cherished motto is : "Unum corpus sumus in
Christo," a motto quite conforming to their old
formula, namely that "where Christ is, there is
the Church." In virtue of such a formula Prot
estants have believed themselves, ever since the
sixteenth century, to belong to the one Christian
Church, though not uniform in its extrinsic mani
festations and organization.
Today the Protestant Unionists would like to
mitigate, if not eliminate, such deformity. They
realize that their own divisions and subdivisions
are very advantageous to Catholicism, as the
ancient maxim "Regnum divisum desolabitur"
cannot be called in doubt. The far-sighted con
temporary Protestants do not fail to acknowledge
the risk which the Christian Evangelical Church
runs because of the centrifugal tendency of the
so-called Separatists. Such a tendency leads to a
deplorable individualism and makes out of each
Evangelical pastor a pope, not preferable indeed to
that of Rome. The unity in Christ of Evangelical
192

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Churches must be kept and venerated : yet, beside
this invisible unity, a visible unity is highly ben
eficial, a unity constituted by the strict coordina
tion of the various churches, even as in man there
is, together with the one invisible soul, the multi
form visible body.1
Individualism and sectarianism are the marks of
Protestantism which strike the Latin conscience unfavor
ably. The sentiment of the universal mission of Christi
anity seems to be more of a living issue among the Latins
than among other peoples. Latins must have inherited
the universal genius of Rome, since the Catholic note has
such a tremendous fascination for them.
This ideal of universality led, a few months ago, the
distinguished Italian journalist, Pietro Rampolla, to re
proach the national churches of Europe with having lost
the sentiment of Catholic Christianity. He wrote thus:
Martin Luther, who was a great genius, but a
small heart, as soon as he had caught a glimpse of
the possibility of his religious reform, preoccupied
himself, above anything else, with the creation of a
church pre-eminently "German" which would
gather the soul, the fervor, the heart of the nation ;
the Anglican Church, which accepts a very great
part of the ritual and external practices of the
Catholic Church, rebelled against the authority of
Rome, being concerned with nothing else but
affirming above all and first of all the independence
of its own nationality, even in the religious wor
ship; and likewise, to a great extent, Eastern
Churches, jealous of an intimate autonomy, have
been incapable of understanding widely the uni-
"B. Labanca : "II Papato." Roma. Bocca. 1905.
193

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
versal sense of brotherhood, which ought to be in
each branch of Christendom and which shall ulti
mately rise, in spite of the selfish interests of
many, on the horizon of the near future.
Then, to the national reformers, Mr. Rampolla opposes
Francis of Assisi, with his wide, complex and universal
spirit. His language of love and brotherhood, the Italian
journalist says, crosses the mountains and oceans, annuls
boundaries of races, throws down hatred, grudges, and
vengeances; he gathers and confounds, in his great im
petus of love, heroes and faint-hearted ones, rich and
beggars, men and things, living and lifeless things. Other
religious geniuses shut themselves within certain
boundaries, with their own glories and greatness, being
almost jealous of communicating to the others their own
happiness. Not so Francis. This saint, the purest flower
of Christian democracy, did not place any limit to his
love and mercy. His figure is suffused with goodness and
sympathy universal. He is the symbol of the true and
ideal human brotherhood. Among the religious and social
reformers he is the greatest; for he aimed at reforming,
modifying, correcting and inspiring the universal human
soul. Even Don Romolo Murri seems to have no sympathy
with Protestantism. He acknowledges that the Protest
ant Reformation was, in a certain way and for some reli
gious souls, an occasion to interrogate more deeply their
own consciences and live more intensely their own reli
gion ; yet he charges it with many mistakes.
This religious movement, he writes,1 had pro
found causes in the historical process of ecclesi
astical organization and action during the Middle
'"Battaglie d'Oggi" (Vol. Ill, p. 98).
194

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Ages. It had a good many traditions to revindi
cate and innovations to introduce ; but it exceeded
its designs. It mistook the starting point, which
was the negation of all authority, thus destroying
the Church; it mistook the means, the ends, in
brief, everything.
As Fogazzaro, so Murri has faith in Catholicism. He
holds that the Catholic faith, though not an untouched
patrimony, yet is still very rich and capable of nourishing
democracy. What, he writes, to Brunetiere has seemed,
and to modern society ought to seem, admirable
above everything, in Catholicism, is its immense
social value and social authority. Catholicism
possesses a virtue which few suspect, and very
few, even among ourselves, know. Its spirit, its
hierarchy, its centralized power," which to many
seemed to have become socially useless, possess a
reserve of inexhaustible energy. To many Catholi
cism seems about to perish; but the history of
Catholicism, which centuries of trials have trained
in the government of humanity, may be said to be
about to begin, even as that of democracy.
******* The realization of the imperfection of Protestantism,
on the part of the Latins, even among such as are not
lacking in an intellectual and spiritual culture, is further
"Murri wrote so in 1913. We doubt if he thought the same
few years later, when the centralized Catholic power, viz., the
Papacy, wrecked all the generous dreams of the Christian Demo
crats. He must have realized then that the centralization of all
authority in one man means necessarily relentless despotism and
tyranny and that the episcopal authoritative system represents
a truer ideal of Catholicism than the papal.
195

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
evidenced by the case of the Modernists in general. In
France and Italy the Roman Catholic Church numbers
among its adherents a good many clergymen and laymen
with lofty minds and decision of character. None would
deny men like Gazzola, Minocchi, Ghignoni, Semeria,
Bonaiuti, Fracassini, Bonaccorsi,1 Avolio, Scotti, Fogaz
zaro, Panzacchi2 and others (to confine ourselves to Ital
ians only) to be endowed with a deep faith and inspired
by a great religious interest. A great many of them are
quite free from agnosticism and are strictly orthodox.
They have devoted the best of their minds and hearts to
the truly Christian cause of adapting Roman Catholicism
to the intellectual, moral, and social exigencies of our
, times. Yet, in spite of the bitter opposition, persecution, and
disappointments with which they met, none of them has
for a moment entertained the purpose to throw his lot
with Protestantism. None have dared to join it. They
have not desired to abandon Catholicity. And why ? How
are we to explain the natural aversion for Protestantism
on the part of men with a thorough intellectual and
religious education? Are they indeed to be taxed with
narrow-mindedness and prejudice against Protestantism?
No indeed. Another and quite different reason will
account for this.
The Modernists do not fail to acknowledge that
"Bonaccorsi, in his "Harnack and Loisy" (Firenze. Libr.
Fior. 1904), strongly denounces the misconception of Loisy's
thought by the Jesuitical school.
'Panzacchi (in the "Giornale d'ltalia"; 5; March, 1904) pitied
the sad condition of Loisy and the French priests "who, because
of their study of the texts and their critical history of Chris
tianity, are being severely censured and condemned by the Roman
Curia." 196

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Protestantism was something more than a mere protest.
It was an historical development of Christian life. It
gave to the Christian principle such spiritual power as it
had not possessed for many centuries. It emancipated
man and democratized society. It opened the door for
religion to come into modern civilization. All these and
other achievements Modernists appreciate. Yet they have
no faith in Protestantism. Even when excommunicated
and persecuted they still remain Catholic in spirit. Evi
dently they must see something wrong in Protestantism.
They must find intrinsic, objective deficiencies within
the systems of Luther and Calvin.
They must realize that if Protestantism is, to a great
extent, right in its charges against Roman Catholicism,
Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, is not entirely
wrong in its denouncement of Protestantism.
They believe that if Protestantism is right in charging
Roman Catholicism with having put the Church above
the Bible, and the pope above both, also Roman Catholi
cism, in its turn, is not less right in charging Protestantism
with having destroyed the Church altogether and placed
above the Bible the fallible individual conscience.
Again. They believe that if Roman Catholicism is to
be reproached for its unauthorized additions to the primi
tive deposit of faith, such as the papal supremacy and
infallibility, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
of the Virgin Mary, the treasury of merits and the grant
ing of indulgencies and other practices, Protestant
ism, in its turn, means the mutilation of that deposit, from
which they have subtracted a great many Scriptural and
Apostolic doctrines, as (to cite only a few) those con
cerning the sacramental nature and Apostolic institutions
of the hurch, real presence of Christ in the Sacrament
197

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
of the Holy Eucharist, priesthood, with its character and
powers, the Communion of Saints, in its mystical sense,
symbolic worship, etc. Briefly, they consider Protestant
ism a deformation of the divine idea of the Church not
less grave than that of the papacy.
They maintain, moreover, that if Roman Catholicism
is deeply marked by a crushing weight of intellectual
tyranny, Protestantism, in its turn, presents a disgusting
spectacle of arrant individualism and intellectual and
spiritual anarchy.
They hold that if Roman Catholicism is to be de
nounced for its superstition and fanaticism, Protestant
ism, on the other hand, is to be taxed with its relentless
rationalism, its deleterious radicalism and chilling
inhumanity. Yet again: They are aware of the fact that if Roman
Catholicism, on account of its immobility, has put itself
in antithesis to history and life, Protestantism, on the
contrary, wishing to keep itself in harmony with the
various forms of modern progress, has not hesitated to
put itself, in not a few instances, out of harmony with
the eternal revelation of God. The Modernists know that
a great many aberrations of modern times, such as Mor-
monism, Spiritualism, Christian Science and other phe
nomena, affecting the religious, ethical and social sphere,
have sprung, more or less directly, from Protestantism.
They further realize that if the spiritual and ethical
influence of Roman Catholicism over its adherents is, to
a great extent, a failure, even the religious and moral hold
of Protestantism is not so strong as Protestants pretend
it to be. The Modernists are acquainted with the fact that
religious authority is steadily losing power and effective
ness in the Protestant world, and that the control of
198

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Protestantism over both domestic and social life is evi
dently lessening.
They also know that Protestantism is not offering a
serious resistance to secularism, the real evil threatening
nowadays Christian religion. Looking, for instance, to
the United States of America, the paradise of Protest
antism, what do they discover? They see materialism
in all its forms of greed of gold, selfish luxury and com
fort, moral corruption, social injustice raging furiously.1
They see an awful desecration of the home, as revealed
by nearly a hundred thousand divorces in a year.
All this the alert Latin intelligence realizes. Herein
lies the reason why Modernists have faith in Catholicism.
They firmly believe that the Catholic ideal of the Church
is far more complete than the Protestant; for, while it
does emphasize the principle of progress in the life of
the Church and its adaptation to the intellectual and
moral needs of society, it lays hold also of another prin
ciple no less paramount, the integrity and historical con
tinuity of Christian life, and consequently, the unity and
catholicity of the Church. The Modernists hold that the
Protestant loss of visible unity of the Church is some
thing more fatal than Protestants are ready to admit.
Protestant spirit, which tends to reduce the whole con
tent of the Gospel to God and the soul, is too repugnant

"The statistics regarding the social infection in the United States
are quite alarming. Dr. Briggs states that in 1912, of the popu
lation of New York City, at least 800,000 (one-fifth of the popu
lation) had or had had some venereal diseases. Taking the army
as the embodiment of the people, we find that, according to the
reports of experts from Harvard and other medical schools, the
proportion of the soldiers afflicted with venereal disease in the
years 1906-1907 was as follows: In France, 28.6 per thousand;
Russia, 62.7; Great Britain, 68.4; United States, 167.8.
199

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
to the Modernists and too contrary to the fundamental
idea of human solidarity. To the Protestant individual
istic theory they contrast the conception of historical
Christianity, according to which the Church is a body, a
kingdom, a society in which the Gospel lives.
Unlike Protestants, the Modernists do not reject as
false the doctrines of the Church ; they regard them only
as imperfect interpretations of Christian faith, which are
capable of being perfected through the vital power of the
same principles which formerly inhered in them.
Thus the Modernists are dissatisfied with the papal
form of Catholicism, not with Catholicism itself ; for they
know that Catholicism is not necessarily such as it is
presented solely by the Roman Church. They entertain
the vision of a better and more spiritual Catholicism, a
Catholicism apt to understand the actual life and
influence it.
Except those possessing a deep insight, most Protest
ants, while well aware of every success of Protestantism,
seem quite unconscious of its utter failures. Not so the
Modernists. The failure of Protestantism is too apparent
to them. In spite of its partial success, they discern signs
of the passing of Protestantism. This is the reason why
the Modernists, while struggling against the Roman form
of Catholicism, do not desire Protestantism. Their ideal
is not that of Wittemberg or Geneva. They do not regard
Protestantism as a development of Christianity any more
final than they regard the medieval Catholicism of Rome,
nor do they consider it a form of Christian life more
permanent than Catholicism. They see the salvation of
the gospel and Christianity in a new Catholicism.
Beneath what is old within Catholicism they behold essen
tial elements which have the power to survive the crisis
200

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
of modern thought and conscience. Beneath what is
decaying in Catholicism, they see real signs of promise.
Beneath what is dead they feel the warmth of life. They \
believe, in short, that the religion of the future is not
Protestantism, but true Catholicism.
*******

JO I

CHAPTER VII.
THE REFORMATION OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM
From what has been said already it naturally follows
that Protestantism is not and never will be able to replace
Catholicism among Latin peoples. Catholicism, besides
being in itself something more complete, perfect and
harmonic than Protestantism, is, in relation to the Latins,
the form of Christianity more suitable to them. It is the
emanation, the natural product of the Latin soul, even as
Protestantism is a conception purely German. All
thought of a reformation of the Roman Church in a
Protestant sense is to be quite excluded from one's mind.
Yet we ought not lose all hope of the ultimate reform
ing of Roman Catholicism. It is not something quite
outside the pale of the possibility. But Protestants are
not those who can or must bring it about.
For a long time the reform of Roman Catholic peoples
has been persistently spoken among the Protestant
bodies of the United States. Meetings and conferences
have been proposed and held, agreements effected, means
of various kinds considered to such an end. Yet always
quite fruitlessly. The efforts of Protestantism, in that
direction, are doomed to a sure failure. They waste their
energies in pursuing an unattainable end.
Modern Protestantism cannot exert any reforming
influence, for it needs itself to be reformed. Should today
another Luther or Calvin arise, he would not turn his
attention to Roman Catholicism, for he would find within
his own organization much, very much, to keep him busy.
Protestantism cannot exercise any reforming influence"'
upon Rome, because it is too disunited, too incoherent,
203

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
and, consequently, too weak. It is its own weakness (a
result of the lack of cohesion) that prevents Protestant
ism from exerting a real power over the religious, social
and international problems of modern life. Rome is
aware of such weakness : accordingly she has no concern
with nor respect for Protestantism. The salvation of
Protestantism and its usefulness, in relation to the uni
versal Christendom, depends on the corporate union of its
scattered spiritual forces. This corporate union would
result in greatly increasing the militant power of Protest
antism, and would not fail to make an impression upon
the conscience of the Church of Rome. By strengthening
its own influence by means of unity, Protestantism could
impress Rome, create within her a more tolerant and
respectful attitude toward the Protestant world, and,
eventually, make her a more spiritual and vital force.
It is only a united, strong, powerful Protestantism that,
by the repercussion of its vigorous life, could touch and
move Rome. Protestantism, as it is today, is absolutely
powerless. Those who can reform Roman Catholicism are the
Roman Catholics themselves. It is something which can
not come from the outside. It must spring from within,
from its very bosom. It is vain to hope for a reform
of Roman Catholicism and its adherents carried out in
opposition to the Church. Protestants have not nor can
have upon Roman Catholic peoples that authority which
is necessary to exert an influence on them. In order to
reform the corrupt practices of Roman Catholic peoples,
one ought to reform first the doctrines and, above all, the
spirit of the hierarchical or official Church. But this
Church is such that she cannot be reformed by any out
side influence. She ought to reform herself.
204

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
The most intelligent advocates of reformation among
Roman Catholics have proclaimed this truth. Even the
Modernists of late have clearly perceived it. They all
agree in maintaining that if a reform of the Roman
Church is to be ever hoped for, it can originate only from
within herself. Undoubtedly it is not to be said that the
Modernists do not realize fully the corruption of Roman
Catholicism and the urgent need of a purification of it.
On the contrary, they are very well aware of it ; yet they
firmly believe that, notwithstanding the wounds and
various evils whereby Roman Catholicism is being
troubled, there is, at its bottom, the stream of life from
which its spiritual regeneration must come. The regen
eration of the Latin peoples cannot come from Protest
antism. What will regenerate Latin and all Catholic
peoples is not the displacement of Catholicism and the
suppression of its worship and practices ; it is the quicken
ing of the former and the spiritualization of the latter.
Gaetano Negri had a deep insight, indeed, when he
wrote that, in order to renew Christianity among the
Catholic Italians we need to "keep untouched the dog
matic and ritualistic structure of Catholicism, and know
how to interpret its symbols at the light of modern
thought."1 Latin and other Catholic peoples, both ignorant and
cultured, know that Protestantism is not, and cannot be,
their religion. They do not feel, and cannot make them
selves at home within it. Therefore any reform of
Roman Catholicism cannot be other than a self-
reformation. ******* We are well aware of the fact that this self-reforma-

'G. Negri: "Ultimi Saggi" Milano. Hoepli. 1904.
205

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
tion of Roman Catholicism will never be brought about
through a spontaneous initiative of the ecclesiastical
authority. The pope and the hierarchy will be opposed
forever to the idea of reform. This can be accomplished
only as excluding the pope, nay, in spite of him and
against him. The martyrdom of Savonarola, the failure
of Lamennais and the other liberal Catholic of the nine
teenth century, and the persecution against the Modern
ists of late, prove in a conclusive manner that it is vain
to expect a serious reform of the Roman Church by or
through the Papacy. The Papacy will never resolve to
take a step backward and make a new start. It will
never retract what it has already decreed, especially in
regard to its own constitution and prerogatives. Neither
will it ever be led to give a wider interpretation to its
dogmatic formularies.
Modern Biblical scholarship and historical research
have undermined the foundations of the papal system.1
'Neander, Gieseler, Langen, Baur, Hagenback, Dollinger, Rein-
kens, Schroedl, Ranke, Friedberg, Friedrich, Ewald, Thiersch,
Lachler, Weizsacker, Niedner, Guericke, Kurtz, Herzog, Karl
Muller, Fischer, Hurst, Harnack and other German scholars
have assailed the walls of the medievel edifice of papal suprem
acy. So in England Milman, Stanley, Robertson, Wakeman,
Pusey, Lightfoot, Creighton, Schaff, Littledale, Briggs, Puller,
Bright, Salmon, Gore and others have done. Papal ultramon-
tanism has been also disavowed by the modern champions of the
liberal Catholic school in France, by Lamennais, Reville and
Sabatier, by Loisy, Houtin and other Modernists. In Italy the
papal system has been, in different ways, attacked by Mazzini,
Niccolini, Lambruschini, Ricasoli, Mamiani, Settembrini, Bonghi,
Guerzoni, Spaventa, Fiorentino, Vera, Cantoni, Tocco, Dandolo,
Gabelli, Berti, Levi, Bianchi-Giovini, Amabile, De Crescenzo,
Negri, Mariano, Chiappelli, Labanca, Comba, Rosadi, Barzellotti,
Caetani, Panzacchi, Cervesato, Oliva, Murri, Minocchi, Fracas-
sini, Ghignoni, Bartoli, Avolio, Scotti and others.
206

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Yet the Papacy does not seem to have taken notice of
the inexorable judgment pronounced on its claims.1 It
still keeps its doors tightly shut to the light of truth.
Satisfied with the unconscious homage of the popular
masses, it is indifferent toward the imperative demands
of cultured intelligence and enlightened consciences. -^
History teaches us that all the attempts at the reform
of the Roman Church, throughout the centuries, have
been made by the lower clergy. If ever the reformation
will be brought about within Rome, it will be by the
priests. It is they only who will eventually be able to
reshape gradually the conscience of the Church. When
such a new conscience will have been formed within the
Church, the Papacy will be bound to surrender.
It is not maintained here that the Papacy will go.
We do not deem an extinction of it indeed probable.
An institution which was determined by deep reasons,
ideal as well as historical, reasons taking root in con
crete conditions of the world and humanity; an institu
tion which has, moreover, in such a large and profound
manner acted on the structure and course of human his
tory, and still preserves the possibility of taking a new
vigor and regaining influence among the peoples, is not
likely to disappear from the Christian world.' A cen-
"Renan said, with regard to Roman Catholicism: "It is a bar
of iron ; it does not listen to reason." (In a letter dated August
24, 1845, published by Abbe Cognat.)
"Even Renan realized the indestructibility of Catholicism. In
1884, having been asked by a certain person if he believed in
the possibility of adapting Catholicism to the new life, he replied :
"Two things are certain : Catholicism cannot perish ; Catholicism
cannot remain what it is. These hours when all the outlets
appear barred are the great hours of Providence ; but the agony
at such times is great, and the lot of those who are reserved for
this hour is cruel." 207

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
tralizing power could prove still beneficial, within Chris
tendom, for the preservation of Christian faith. What
is certain is that the Papacy, willing or unwilling, shall,
in time, undergo a radical transformation.
Gaetano Negri was right indeed in predicting that the
renewal of papal Catholicism and its salvation was to
result from the education and culture of the clergy.
Dealing with the crucial question of the relations of the
Roman Church to the civil society, he maintains that
the only means to bring about a reconciliation between
the Roman Catholic principles and the political and so
cial movement of modern society is to
try to create, in the midst of the clergy, a wide
stream of culture, make them to feel the breath of
the modern spirit, and wrest them from their iso
lation. In the culture of the clergy lies also the
salvation of Catholicism, and the only hope of
succeeding to infuse a breath of life into the
decrepit and dying giant. The air and light of
new times must penetrate into the hypogeum of
a mummified hierarchy, in order again to awaken
life there and effect its beneficial transformation.1
Also Raffaele Mariano agrees with Negri in holding
that historical criticism, Biblical exegesis, modern theo
logical culture, are bound, in due time, to act as solvent
upon the Papacy. Certain influences of modern religious
thought upon the papal system are already visible. The
narrow and intolerant Ultramontanism of De Maistre
and Hergenrother today is almost universally discredited
within the Roman Church. The interpretation of the
papal system by Newman, Kraus, Acton, Ehrardt, Funk,
Duchesne, Batiffol, and others, shows the penetration of
"G. Negri: "Ultimi Saggi" (p. 229). Milano. Hoepli. 1904.
208

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
a broader, more liberal and sympathetic spirit into the
mental attitude of the church. Such spirit is surely
bound to triumph in the future.
Rome cannot help breathing the intellectual and social
atmosphere of the present time. She must breathe it or
die. The two greatest factors of modern civilization, sci
ence and democracy, cannot be repelled forever. They
are forces which, sooner or later, are bound to dominate
and pervade the thought and life of the Roman Catholic
world. There are no enclosures that can indefinitely
resist such forces. The modernistic phenomenon tells
us clearly that the energies of actual life are already
pressing for entrance, from many a side, into the walled
Roman dominion.
Yet their penetration will be gradual. The Roman
Catholic reform will not be other than slow. The tra
ditional beliefs are too deeply rooted in the consciences
of the majority to be supplanted and replaced within a
short period. A great many, if not most, of the clergy
are still unaware of the fact that there is something
wrong with the papal system. Those who have come
to realize the decay of the Catholicism of the Vatican
are few as yet. They are but the exception.
Let the number of the enlightened and cultured priests
increase ; wait for the time when the priests with a real
consciousness will be counted not by dozens nor by hun
dreds, but by thousands; then the Vatican will feel
compelled to capitulate and come to terms.
When the Papacy will have surrendered to scientific
method and allowed the light of truth to shine upon
itself, then it will discover, to its great amazement, that
the consciousness of its divine right was as false as it
was strong; that its fundamental principles, however
209

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
greatly they have assisted the purpose of Christianity in
a certain period of its development, are unsupported by
divine sanction. The Papacy will realize then that spirit
ual values are, in Christianity, superior to institutional
forms, for the latter were intended to be subordinate to
the former, not vice versa. It will understand that
Christianity is not only dogma, but it is life, and, as
such, is also movement, progress, adaptation ; that, again,
it is not only rule and discipline, but, above all, love, and
consequently, tolerance, charity, and brotherhood. Again,
it will become convinced that if a legitimate use of au
thority leads the Christian soul to its goal, absolutism,
on the contrary, is destructive of what is more essential
and vital to the soul, liberty; and accordingly, it will see
the necessity of democratizing its own constitution and
substituting for its spiritual dictatorship the democratic
conception of the ancient primacy.
The probable issues of this world-war increase the
hopes for a near democratization of the papal system.
Everything seems to point out that the twentieth cen
tury will mark the triumph of the democratic principle,
even as the nineteenth marked that of the nationalistic
one. Human society, all over the earth, is on the verge
of a complete transformation in a democratic sense.
Surrounded by a world-wide democracy, the absolutism
of the papal Church will not be able to endure very long,
under its actual form.
Face to face with its fate, the Papacy might, it is true,
resort to a desperate resistance. But, by doing so, it
would, most likely, provoke a great separatist move
ment within the church. Thus either a radical reforma
tion or a large schism presents itself as an inevitable
event in the future of the papal Church.
210

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
The dawn of that day may be far, very far; yet it
may also be nearer than we imagine. Whether it be
imminent or far off, we like to entertain the hope of its
coming. A great many are quite skeptical on this point,
saying that if Lamennais, and more recently, Tyrrell
and Von Hiigel, Kraus and Schell,1 Loisy and Sabatier,
Murri and Fogazzaro, have not succeeded in it, neither
will those who are coming after them. Those who argue
thus are wrong. The liberal Catholics of the last cen
tury were not able to reform the Roman Church, neither
have the Modernists of late, yet they have planted seeds
which, in due time, will bear fruit.
The skepticism of those who seem not to entertain any
hope about the transformation of the Roman system is
evidently too radical. They behold only the massive
fact of the Papacy and fail to think of the tremendous
force of such factors as history, life, and conscience.
The Church, wrote three years ago the Rev.
Ugo Ianni, an Italian Waldesian pastor, is al
ways, among the other things, a conscience.
Lulled to sleep, conscience is capable of awaken
ing; defiled, it is capable of purification; op
pressed, it preserves the possibility of liberty.
The laws of conscience are never outlawed by pro
scription; its needs cannot be silenced forever.
Roused, conscience discovers the fetters in which
they bound it sleeping. The possibility of liberty
is then transformed into a militant force; and
when the awakening of conscience is general, its
fetters fall broken. Therefore, however terrible

"The books of Dr. Herman Schell, professor of Apologetics at
the University of Wurzburg, were condemned in February 24,
1899. He submitted to the Decree of the Index.
211

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
and frightful, infallible Caesarism is not omnip
otent. We believe only in the omnipotence of
God.1

"See "Coenobium," March 31, 1915.

212

CHAPTER VIII.
ANGLICANISM AND ITS OPPORTUNITY.
There is a religious system which could prove more
fitted than Protestantism to accomplish the reformation
of Roman Catholicism. There is a form of Catholicism
which, if it actually does not represent what Latin peo
ples need and the modern Catholics are looking for, at
least includes many of its elements, together with the
possibility of further developments. This system is
Anglicanism. There are a great many who misconceive
the true nature of Anglicanism; to them it means "con
servative Protestantism," whereas it is essentially /
"progressive Catholicism." -/f
Indeed, Anglicanism embodies a purer, a simpler, and
more apostolic Catholicism, the Catholicism as it was
before the medieval papal deformation. This appeal to
the pre-medieval religion places Anglicanism in a unique
position. Its essentially Catholic foundations enable it
to reach, to a considerable extent, Roman Catholicism.
Even such an Ultramontane as Count Joseph De Maistre
came to the realization that Anglicanism has the singu
lar power to touch Roman Catholicism with one hand,
and Protestantism with the other.1 Today, according to
the confession of the Modernists, they are looking to
Anglicanism as to the bond which eventually will reunite
all Catholics.
Indeed, if the institutional element of Christianity be
a factor with which the various branches of Christendom
must reckon, in order to lay the foundations of the unity
"Lausanne: "Considerations sur la France" (II; 1796).
213

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
of the Body of Christ, then the vision of the central
churchmanship of Anglicanism cannot fail to loom larger
and larger. The Papacy might conceivably renounce
some of its powers in behalf of the Episcopacy; the
papal Church might, so to say, episcopalize herself; but
it will never consent to become presbyterian or congre
gational. Likewise the Greek Orthodox and Eastern
Churches would never give up their episcopal system,
which is closely connected with the greatest victories of
orthodox faith over heresies and they rightly keep it as a
most sacred and inviolable heritage. Nor will the
Protestant bodies ever allow themselves to be papalized.
They may go so far as to approach an episcopal con
ception of the church, but no further.
Thus Anglicanism is the most inclusive or compre
hensive of all religious systems. It exalts the Bible as
the supreme authority in matters of faith, yet, on the
other hand, it holds fast to the principle of tradition and
values the authority of the Creeds, the Councils, and the
Fathers. In the first half of the nineteenth century, at
the very time when Biblical criticism among the liberal
Protestants of Germany wss reaching its crisis, the Ox
ford Movement gave to the traditional principle in
creased prestige.
Because of the compromise upon which Anglicanism
rests and is manifest in its position it has met the op
position of the religious extremists. It has been con
demned by the papal Church ;* it is looked upon with
diffidence by the Protestants. Yet all this cannot make
its witness to "the faith once for all delivered to the
saints" less strong and glorious.

lSee Appendix, pp. 236-245 : "On the validity of Anglican
Orders."

214

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Again. Anglicanism stands unrivaled in Christen
dom for its combination of Catholic tradition and intel
lectual freedom. While it has all the advantages of the
authoritative principle, which in Protestantism is wanting,
it has not the disadvantages of the rigid Roman author
ity. Unlike Protestantism, it possesses a considerable
degree of, and the .possibility of a still greater, unity and
cohesive power ; it is riot lacking in the strength derived
from the corporate ideal of Christianity. Its veneration
of the Holy Scriptures as the ultimate authority, its ap
peal to the ancient Church, its foundation of a demo
cratic episcopal form makes Anglicanism far richer than
Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy, in possible
developments of character and life.
Anglicanism alone, among the various Christian sys
tems, has received the power of assimilating new ideas
without breaking with the past. It is the only system
which is both ancient and modern. It has gone through
the fiercest struggles and the most trying ordeals, yet it
has come out of them victorious and has preserved it
self strong with experience and vigorous with life. It
looks young, modern, ultra-progressive; yet it glories in
nineteen centuries of uninterrupted historical tradition.
It is old; yet it is the only form of Catholicism which
can understand the world and be understood by it; it
can satisfy, better than any other Catholic system, the
exigencies of a modern mind and conscience.
******* Nevertheless, we do not claim perfection for Angli
canism. We are very far indeed from concealing or
minimizing its deficiencies. Many of the charges brought
against it are, to a certain extent, true, though their
importance and consequences are usually exaggerated.
215

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Thus one hears Romanists maintaining that Anglican
ism is an utter confusion of beliefs. It cannot be denied
that Anglicanism is lacking all that outward institutional
uniformity and that strong cohesion of belief which are
found in the Roman system. There are variances, more
or less pronounced, between the two schools known as
low and high churchmanship. Historical reasons deter
mined the fact that Anglican formularies, in certain
points, present such looseness as to make them suscep
tible of various interpretations. Such variances within
the Anglican communion are bad enough, yet it would
be simply untrue to affirm that there are among Angli
cans contradictions on the essential points of Catholic
faith. In conclusion, there is among them unity "in
necessariis," if by the term "necessary" we mean what
was held as such by the Apostolic and Patristic Church.
Anglicanism is conspicuously orthodox on the funda
mental doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and
so it is also on the Sacramental system, the Holy
Eucharist, the divine character of the Church, the Com
munion of Saints, the Remission of Sins. Thus, in
spite of all its imperfections both of theory and practice,
Anglicanism retains the essentials of Catholicity in faith
and organization. It rejects the medieval Catholicism
of Peter Lombard, Bellarmine, Suarez, and the other
schoolmen, but it retains the more ancient, primitive
Catholicity of Irenaeus, Cyprian, Augustine and the
Fathers. It casts off "the Holy Roman Church" of
Trent, but it venerates the "One, Catholic and Apostolic
Church" of Nicea.
It is further maintained, more especially by apologists
from papal quarters, that the Anglican Church is utterly
enslaved to the State, that nationalism rages within her
216

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
and paralyzes her life. This is true only in part. For,
in spite of all, one cannot hold in truth that the Anglican
Church has failed to consecrate the life of the English
people. If such charge were true, then we should be
compelled to admit that Christianity itself has failed.
The Church of England has partially failed through the
imperfection of the men who have represented her, but
she has not failed so far as to withhold the gifts of
supernatural truth and grace which she is commissioned
to minister.
One might add, in this connection, that if nationalism,
resulting from the linking of the Church and the State
is certainly disadvantageous, not even the pretended
internationalism of the papal Church seems to be an ideal
condition. It is a fact that the religio-political interna
tionalism of the pope has profoundly troubled and disor
dered the Latin nations of Europe. It has been the
cause of the most acute dissension between the religious
and the civil conscience of Italians. It has resulted in
provoking in France and Italy a hostile attitude of the
State toward the Church, which has proved very detri
mental to her religious and spiritual activity.
Again, the fact that the Church of Austria-Hungary
(to confine ourselves to one instance) acknowledges
Rome as the center of Catholic unity has not made the
religious and social life of the dual monarchy purer and
holier than that of the English nation, nor has it pre
vented the empire of the Hapsburgs from being a most
disturbing element in the political and social relations of
European peoples.
Yet again, it is the Roman Catholic internationalism
which, three years ago, led the pope to assume the most
immoral and degrading neutrality before the paramount
217

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
moral issues involved in the invasion of Belgium and the
other atrocious crimes of the great world-war. The at
titude of him who pretends to be above the nations, has,
in the tragic day of the crucifixion of humanity, been
much like that of Pontius Pilate, who washed his hands
and allowed the populace to crucify the Lord. The
world has pronounced its irrevocable judgment on the
papal sin, and history, the inexorable Nemesis, has rati
fied it and will transmit it to the future.
Let not Roman Catholics delude themselves. The
Catholic ideal of the primitive church, with the uni
versal episcopate as the center of unity, could prove still
beneficial to the religious and civil society; but the
medieval conception of religious unity, which has re
sulted in making papalism a synonym of kaiserism, can
no longer appeal to or interest a world which is today
bleeding and agonizing for the sake of the democratic
ideal. The salvation of the modern society, religious as well
as civil, lies in democracy, even as the salvation of the
medieval society lay in theocracy; and only an Episco
pal Church can inspire a Christian democracy.1 Episco
pacy alone is able to develop and guide the forces of the
complex modern life, freeing it from the fetters of papal
tyranny and preventing the same from falling into the
anarchy of Protestant individualism. This is the unmis
takable lesson drawn from the history of the times of
Luther and Pius IV, Baur and Pius IX, Harnack
and Pius X. The German reformers purposed to de-
"The fact that the Episcopacy of the Russian Church has failed
to bring about a Christian democracy does not disprove our state
ment. Russian Episcopate has been untrue to itself. By its
espousing the cause of the Czarism it has betrayed the funda
mental principles for which Episcopacy stands.
218

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
mocratize Christian society, but having forsaken episco
pacy, the fulcrum of Christian democracy, their struggle
for the democratic ideal ended in an anarchistic revolu
tion. On the other side, the papal reaction, which cul
minated in the Council of Trent, did nothing but make
the constitution of the church still more hatefully aristo
cratic, and widen the gap between it and the new world.
During the nineteenth century, while Tubingen and the
other German schools, by their destructive criticism, in
creased the chaos within the Christian society, Pius IX,
by his Index, definitely proscribed all forms of demo
cratic progress. In more recent times the generous
efforts of the Modernistic school have been made sterile
by the influences of the rationalistic Protestantism of
Harnack's school; and, on the other hand, resolutely
opposed by the unchristian absolutism of the Vatican,
which grows more intolerant and cruel as it sees its
end nearer.
Going back to Anglicanism, we maintain that, in spite
of its faults, its anomalies, and shortcomings, which
must be frankly admitted, the strong and unshakable
historical basis upon which it stands, its sober theology,
its vigorous spiritual and ethical life, its revived worship,
its proven loyalty to our Lord and His Kingdom, have
luminously shown it to be a working system. Its vi
tality in the supernatural sphere bears witness to its di
vine claims.
Today the vestiges of secular struggles have not yet
disappeared from within the Anglican Church; its
wounds are not yet fully healed, and there is within it
much that is depressing. Yet, in spite of this, one may
easily see that the blessing of God is upon it. The
presence of God is gloriously visible among Anglicans.
219

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
The power of the Holy Spirit that wrought such wonder
as the Catholic revival of Oxford is still manifest.
Underneath the wounded surface of the divine organism
there is the throb of life, and runs the regenerating
stream of supernatural grace.
******* It has been pointed out that Anglicanism could prove
a providential instrument in helping to bring about a
reform within the Roman Church. We have also seen
that the reformation of Roman Catholicism can come
but from a source essentially Catholic, upon Catholic
principles, through a Catholic process. From such
premises it naturally follows that if Anglicanism wishes
to co-operate somehow in the reform of Roman Cathol
icism it absolutely needs to hold fast to its own true
heritage, to stand firm and unmoved in its assured
position. We are sadly aware of the fact that there is a school
of Anglicans who, without a thorough examination of
the principles involved, still incline to adhere to the in
dictments advanced by liberal Protestantism against the
hierarchico-episcopal Catholicism, its authoritative prin
ciple and theological dogmatism.1
Yet, in spite of all that has been and can fur
thermore be argued against the hierarchico-episcopal
principle, it is a fact that the sanction for its formation
is found within the history of Christianity, and the rea
son for its perpetuation lies within the very nature and
constitution of the Christian Church.
The historian wishing to measure the progress which
the Christian community has accomplished by submitting
"See Appendix, pp. 246-262: "On Modern Italian Thought
and Christian Dogma." 220

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
to hierarchico-episcopal Catholicism and its dogmatism
must never lose sight of the following facts: First of
all, Christianity, which has given itself such a consti
tution is, manifestly, the very force that has conquered
the world and has become the new moral basis of life
and culture.
Secondly, it has the great merit of having preserved
the primitive Christian tradition, which constitutes the
great religious patrimony of the Christian Church. The
censure against the firm conservation of tradition (which
is the pivot of episcopal Catholicism) breaks down when
one considers that only by its means have the constitu
tive principles and facts of Christianity been gathered
and transmitted to succeeding generations. Thus we are
indebted to the action and authority of episcopo-catholic
tradition for all that we know about the form and con
tent of original Christianity.
Furthermore, since this tradition has thus been kept
unchanged, it has been possible to renew its primitive
elements and quicken them through the power of senti
ment as well as by critical examination.
Besides, one ought not to forget that the most peculiar
and greatest result of the theological elaboration of
ancient Catholicism (which, on the foundation of the
revealed doctrine of the "Logos" wrought out and de
fined the dogmas of Christology and the Trinity) was
the first attempt at a reconciliation of faith with knowl
edge and of religious revelation with philosophical rea
son. The appropriation by the Church of certain pre
existing forms of knowledge and culture, produced by
pagan antiquity (which were unquestionably immanent
in human thought and consequently inseparable from it)
was not detrimental to Christianity ; it was rather a con-
221

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
vincing proof of the great receptivity and universalism
of the new religious idea. A great many have com
plained that this method of appropriating ancient cul
ture to Christian dogmatics was a submission of the tra
ditions of Christianity to the influences of pagan specula
tion and, accordingly, a departure from its pristine purity
and ideality and an evidence of invading wordliness.
This is simply a mistake and a result of mental nar
rowness. For, from the penetrating influence of pagan
culture, and, afterwards, of the State, the new civiliza
tion has largely sprung. One might further add that the
clashes and struggles which that penetration caused have
been the very stimulus, the most lively and productive
source of our interior and spiritual life.
To many it seems that the forcing of faith into sym
bols, dogmatic formulas, and doctrinal professions, has
deprived it of its spontaneity and fervor and has well
nigh petrified it. Yet a certain constraint of religious
conscience is inseparable from the very nature of its
content, which is the "divine objective truth." Relig
iously speaking, where one is not bound to revere truth,
there is no faith. When Harnack and his sympathizers
tell us that in religion and Christianity we must look to
the reality and not to the dogmatic formulas and pro
fessions of faith, and that the essentials are not the
creed and extrinsic authority, but the conformity to the
spirit, they are not worthy of our consideration. The
whole process of Harnack's reasoning on this matter and
the nature of his argumentations may show his remark
able scholarship, yet, at the same time, they evidently
attest that historical knowledge and erudition are not
always the same thing as serious and orderly thought,
222

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
which, by analyzing facts and problems, endeavors to
catch their force and meaning.
Spirit is all right. But the religious conscience cannot
remain swinging in empty space. It needs to know what
must be believed and what is the spirit thereof. From
this springs the fact that as dogmas formulated into a
creed were needed in the first centuries of Christian
Church, so they are now. Say what you will about
Christianity, but don't say that a Christianity without
dogmas is sufficient, a Christianity without truths objec
tive, determined and accepted by the universal con
science. A spiritualized Christianity such as that would
be, would dissolve itself into a vague and empty concept,
or a subjective sentimentalism, subservient to the will,
inclinations and preferences of this or that pastor, of
this or that professor of theology. All of which implies
an enormous logical and historical contradiction and a
repugnant absurdity.
The dogmatic principle, within Christianity, implies, as
a logical consequence, authority. The rule of faith pre
supposes necessarily a ruling element to formulate it.
Authority, understood in the sense of a guardianship of
truth, is essentially inherent in the Christian system.
What the Church needs is not the repudiation of author
ity, but a deeper, truer, more spiritual understanding of
it. Spiritualize the conception of authority and you will
realize that it does not deny that universal priesthood of
all believers, which Jesus came to found in the world.
Deepen and idealize the meaning of authority, and you
will understand that it is not intended to suppress the
privilege of the faithful to seek justification in a direct
relation to God. Regulate the legitimate function of
authority, and its conflicts with the evolution of religious
223

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
truth and the liberty of Christian conscience will be
eliminated. In brief, think of authority in the spirit of
Him Who said : "All power is given unto me in heaven
and in earth," and you will find that it resolves itself
into a loving tutelage of the Christian soul and of its
spiritual life.
This ideal conception of authority has a close, inti
mate historical relation to the episcopal principle. The
historian who sets himself to study the formative process
of the episcopal organization of the church and its rising
to be, in its totality, the foundation and the representa
tion of the Church, nay, the very Church itself, is com
pelled to conclude that it was not wholly a transitory
product of the times and of historical circumstances ; for
it shows that it has, within itself, something necessary,
something immanent in the very nature of the Church.
The episcopate identifies itself so closely, so indissolubly
with the very self of the Christian Church that one can
not understand how it might possibly have been deter
mined only by historical and ideal reasons and is forced
to admit that it was divinely willed.
We leave to medieval sophistry the merely academic
questions as to whether the episcopal principle belongs
to the "esse" or only to the "bene esse" of the Christian
Church ; whether there can be a true and genuine branch
of the Church of Christ without the possession of the
historical episcopate, and the like. The fact is that the
episcopate has incarnated and expressed throughout his
tory the living and speaking conscience of the Christian
Church. It is through the episcopate that the Christian
Church has derived the consciousness of her prerogative,
of her unity and of the possession of divine truth.
But we ought to think not only of what the episcopal
224

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
principle has been and has done, but also of what it is
and can do. Many regard the episcopal organization of
the Christian Church as something obsolete, something
which has no reason for existence in future Christianity.
They are greatly mistaken. The episcopal principle is
needed today in the Christian society as it was during the
third, fourth, and fifth centuries. The solidity and ef
ficacy of the episcopal principle is indefectible, not only
ideally, but also practically.
The episcopate, resting on the democratic conception
of the collective representation, creates within the Chris
tian Church that authority which truly realizes the needs
of the community of the faithful. The episcopal ideal,
by removing from the church the absolutistic individual
ism of the papal system and the anarchical individualism
of Protestant confessions, interprets and expresses gen
uinely the collective mind and conscience of Christianity,
and thus brings about true Catholicism.
The episcopate, rightly understood, means essentially
"democracy," and in a sound democracy lies the salva
tion of both religious and civil society. Both Roman
Catholic imperialism and Protestant anarchy are de
structive of the ideal of Christ's "kingdom" on earth,
even as the imperialism of the kaiser and the anarchy
of Lenine are ruinous in the civil domain.
******* All this ought to be more fully realized by those
Anglicans who are somewhat unconscious of their high
privilege. Anglicanism does need to rouse itself. It
needs to stir up within itself faith in its Catholic inherit
ance and mission in Christendom. It needs to elaborate
within itself a deeper and larger consciousness of its
own Catholicity. The strong, solemn, universal affirma-
225

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
tion of Anglican Catholicity has not taken place as yet.
The Oxford Tractarian Movement needs a new spring.
The American Episcopal Church is still waiting for her
Pusey. Both Anglican faith and practice are still far
from being ideal. The standards of doctrinal discipline
need to be raised in such a wise as to prevent the mean
ing of the fundamentally Catholic character of its formu
laries from becoming perverted by false interpretations.
There is, in some Anglican statements of Catholic truth,
a laxity which calls for correction, the defect being of
such a nature as may even lead to heresy.
It is rightly maintained that the Protestant elements,
within the Anglican system, are only adventitious, not
essentially inherent in it. Yet this does not make the
need of checking its working influences less urgent. The
fact that Anglicanism is essentially Catholic in its char
acter, whereas its imperfections are in their nature
transitory and capable of remedy, makes the neglect to
do away with them more culpable.
When the Anglican Church will have deepened her
Catholic conscience, all the evils which actually trouble
her existence will be easily overcome. The church will
then realize more fully, among the other things, the ne
cessity of regaining her spiritual autonomy. The de
pendence of the Church on the State, even if it is not
such a hideous enslavement as some pretend, yet cannot
help proving harmful to the Church and a hindrance to
her supernatural mission. The system of "The Church
within the State" is a menace to the life of the Church.
The Church should be subordinate to the State in tem
poral affairs, but fully separated from it in the religious
sphere. In all that concerns her spiritual function the
Church is sovereign. All the modern tendencies are for
226

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
such a separation, which, undoubtedly, will finally prevail
throughout Christendom.
The revived Anglo-Catholicism will, moreover, turn
its attention to the various dissenting sects, which mean
a marked scattering of the religious energies of the Eng
lish nation. If Anglicanism wishes to become a real
strong factor of religious progress in English life it
ought to exert a centripetal power over the dissenters.
There are too many divergent movements and currents
within English Christianity, each tending to paralyze the
forces of the other. The great problem which presses
upon the Anglican Church and calls for immediate solu
tion is to gather and include all those independent, if
not conflicting, forces. The task is hard indeed, but not
impossible. Everything nowadays seems to indicate that
English sectaries are beginning to feel tired of their
separation and are asking if it is not worth while to
consider a return to the mother church.
If the Church of England will not fail to understand
the position, needs and aspirations of the dissenters and
will be able to make room for them in her Catholic
bosom, it would mean not only the salvation of the dis
senters, but also a great increase of power and prestige
to the church. Nobody can imagine the tremendous
possibilities of an English Christianity reunited on a
comprehensive Catholic basis. Rome would then be
compelled to prostrate herself before the dominating and
conquering power of Anglicanism and would realize the
unreasonableness and uselessness of her isolation.
******* On the awakening of Catholic conscience the future
of Anglicanism in America more particularly depends.
If the American Episcopal Church would know and de-
227

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
velop her own possibilities, she could have in her hand
the power to mould and direct the nation's religion.
The Roman Catholic Church will never succeed in her
task of "making America Catholic." In spite of her
powerful organization and her peculiar ability to influ
ence civil affairs, she is not likely to become the uni
versal religion of the American people. For her cen
tralized system, her undemocratic traditions, her policy
governed by Jesuitical methods, are not in accord with
the intellectual, ethical, political, and social ideas of
Americanism. The Americanism of Father Hecker, of Gibbons,
Keane, Ireland, Spalding and others is very far from
being a genuine fruit of that tree which is known as
papalism, but it is largely due to Protestant influences.
Leo XIII knew this when he, in his letter to Cardinal
Gibbons (22 January, 1899) strongly censured the ten
dencies of a certain number of Roman Catholics of
America. On the other hand, the various Protestant bodies can
not exert a serious influence upon the nation's life at
large, for their sectionalism (which is the root of their
most distinctive organizations, and, consequently, the rea
son for their existence) prevents them from combining
in the adoption of a solid and strong religious policy,
which alone could affect the life of the nation.
Between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protes
tant bodies stands the American Episcopal Church,
which inherited Catholicity from her mother Church of
England. Her faith, which does not deny the due rights
of intelligence, her sober practices, her essential demo
cratic spirit (quite in harmony with American ideals),
enable her to touch and influence effectively both the
228

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
individual and public mind and conscience, while, on the
other hand, the strength of her Catholic foundation fur
nishes her with the "ubi consistam" for the exercise of
a real efficacy over the ever-changing phases of the spirit
ual life of the country.
But to reach the splendid goal which is in sight of the
American Episcopal Church there are certain conditions
to be fulfilled: the most important of which is the
strengthening of the sense of Catholic heritage and Cath
olic discipline. The American sense of liberty should not
be separated from the importance of law, order, and
discipline. Episcopal churchmen of America ought to
appreciate more deeply the value of the apostolic author
ity to which they can appeal, and hold fast to it; for a
solid authoritative basis is the only way to escape from
the disintegrating force of individualism and the turmoil
of other destructive tendencies. Those are mistaken who
see, in the strengthening of the authoritative and disci
plinary principle, a danger for the democratic ideals of
the Church, for, if brought about in an intelligent spirit,
such strengthening would tend, on the contrary,, to
afford a surer basis for the evolution of those ideals. The
danger for the American Episcopal Church lies, more
immediately, in the opposite tendency to enfeeble the
sense of order and under-appreciate the historical experi
ence of Catholic Christianity.
****** *
The day, when the Anglican Church will recreate her
faith in Catholicism and will rise to bear her witness to
the sacred treasure of her Catholic heritage, will witness
to her extraordinary power over the development of
future Christianity and her ability to play a decisive part
in shaping its destinies. 229

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
There are nowadays cultured Roman Catholic priests
who are looking to Anglicanism for light in the solution
of religious problems. There are those who are studying
Anglicanism and finding it illuminating and helpful. But
such are few. The majority are indifferent toward it, for
the very reason that Anglicanism presents itself in a
Protestant guise. The Anglican treasure of Catholic
faith is held in an un-Catholic vessel. The atmosphere
wherein Anglican religious conscience moves and lives is
too saturated with Protestantism. Modern Catholics in
the Roman communion, being dissatisfied with an
exhausted and obselete form of Catholicism, are looking
for truer Catholicism, but they fail to find a Catholic con
science and consciousness within the Anglican Church at
large. They realize the truth of the statement made by
Neale, "England's Church is Catholic, but England's self
is not." This is the reason why most modern Catholics
do not approach Anglicanism. Let Anglicans present the
Church in her true light, and a new disposition will be
created between the Anglican and the progressive part of
the Roman communion. When the intelligent Roman
clergy will have become less indifferent and better, even
friendly disposed toward Anglicanism, then Anglicans
will have the opportunity to influence them, and, through
them, the Church at large. The clergy hold in their hands
the future of the Roman Church. They are the connect
ing link between the official hierarchy and the people.
The hierarchy is too far removed from the people, while
the lower clergy are near the soul and the conscience of
the people. What the clergy are, the people also shall be,
whether the pope and the cardinals wish it or not. The
Roman Catholic priests themselves are very well aware
of this. They know that the redemption of the Roman
Catholics depends on themselves. "Brethren, the salva-
230

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
tion of the Church lies in us," was the prophetic cry
uttered a few years ago by a group of Italian priests.1
Thus, by influencing the clergy, Anglicanism would
touch and affect the Church. By making the evangelical
tendencies and movements, which have been manifested
for some time in the case of a considerable number of
Roman priests, stronger and stronger, Anglicanism would
prepare the way for the spiritual transformation of the
Church, and this, in its turn, would be a prelude to the
supreme and all-divine ideal of Christian unity.
But the hope for a reunion of Christendom will be only
a dream as long as Roman Catholicism remains as it is at
present. A previous transformation of it is a "conditio
sine qua non" of Christian unity. Not until the Papacy
will have conformed its conscience to the gospel of Christ
will it be capable of finding within itself that spirit of
unselfishness and sympathetic understanding which
alone can create a sincere and genuine desire for unity.
The Papacy, as it is today, asks for submission, not
reunion. We have seen that such transformation appears
improbable, but it is not an impossibility.
When the renewed conscience of the Roman Catholic
Church comes to exert its full pressure upon the hier
archy, the Papacy will be compelled to bring also its con
science into harmony with the teachings of Christ. And
when the Papacy will have become more Christ-possessed
and Christ-like, then it will stretch forth its arms, in the
spirit of love, to the Greek and Anglican Episcopal
Churches, and the Anglican Church will then find it a
relatively easy task to persuade Protestantism to return
to the fold, over which the great "Shepherd and Bishop
of souls," of whom St. Peter speaks, is to have an undis-
"From a pamphlet, "La Salvezza e in noi," signed by a group
of Italian seminarists, October, 1909.
231

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
puted dominion. Then, and not until then, will the ideal
of Christian unity become a great and glorious reality.
Great indeed is the opportunity of Anglicanism if it
only knows how to avail itself of it. It seems that God
has reserved for it an illustrious mission. Its Episcopal
heritage, intermediate between the Papal autocracy and
the lawlessness of Protestantism; its sober theology,
avoiding both the extremes of the unmovable, stereotyped
orthodoxy of Greek-Eastern Churches and the strong
tendency to exuberance and exaggeration of Roman
Catholicism ; the world-wide political extension and relig
ious genius of the Anglo-Saxon race — these are forces
which will not fail to prove most helpful in the realiza
tion of a reunited Christendom. May Anglicanism be
found worthy of assisting the great purpose of God for
His One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
And may the Almighty God lead the representatives of
the various Christian systems to a deeper knowledge and
love of His Son Jesus Christ, so that in the light and
power of that love, they may realize their past faults and
present imperfections and cordially join in the earnest
effort toward the advent of a church which shall more
truly represent the kingdom of God on earth and be the
expression of the will of Him who is full of grace and
truth. Then only, all that is intrinsically defective and weak
having been eliminated, the one universal or Catholic
Church shall find in the union and harmonization of the
world's scattered Christian energies the strength to exert
a wider and deeper redeeming influence in the world and
hasten the blessed time when the great Head shall,
through His mystical body, draw the minds and hearts of
all men unto Himself. Amen. 232

APPENDIX
Note 1. Among the so-called "mystic" heresies of \
the twelfth century, the Waldesian is the only one which
still survives in Italy. The heresy rose about the year
1173, in the north of Italy, in the midst of the Cottian
Alps. The first champion of it was Peter Waldo, a
merchant of Lyons, who, repenting of having practiced
usury, renounced all he possessed and gave himself to
the evangelical life, that is to say, to the most rigorous
poverty. Having gathered around himself many other
"poors," he sent them to preach penitence throughout
Italy and France, where thousands were converted
through their influence.
Waldo, thinking to act as a good Catholic, demanded
the approbation of Pope Alexander III, but he failed
to obtain it. In 1184 he was condemned by the Council \
of Verona and anathematized by Pope Lucius III.
Then the Waldesians separated themselves from the
Church. Some of them, however, though disavowing /
the authority of the Catholic priesthood, yet continued
to frequent the Catholic churches; others formed a sect
of their own, chosing ministers, whom they submitted to
extremely rigorous ascetical vows.
The Waldesians, besides charging the clergy with hav
ing gone far from the Gospel, denied the divine powers
which the Catholic Church attributed to them.
The Waldesian Church went through innumerable
vicissitudes. Persecution, exile, death, were the lot of
many of its loyal members. During the sixteenth cen
tury the Waldesians were absorbed in the general Prot
estant movement of Europe. By the Constitution of
233

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
King Charles Albert of Piedmont (1848), they were
granted religious toleration, which gradually became ab
solute freedom.

Note II. Libertade, e Dio,
Voce dall'Oriente,
Voce dall'Occidente,
Voce dai tuoi deserti,
Voce dall'eco dei sepolcri aperti,
Meretrice t'accusa. Inebriata
Sei del sangue dei Santi, e fornicasti
Con quanti ha re la terra. Ahi'la vedete :
Di porpora e vestit: oro, monili,
Gemme tutte l'aggravano: le bianche
Vesti, delizia del primier marito,
Che or sta nei cielo, ella perde nei fango.
Pero di nomi e bi blasfemi e piena,
E nella fronte sua scrisse: "Mistero."
Ahi, la sua voce a consolar gli afflitti
Non s'ode piu: tutti minaccia, e crea
Con perenni anatemi all 'alme incerte,
Ineffabili pene. Gl'infelici,
Qui lo siam tutti, nei comun dolore
Correano ad abbracciarsi, e la crudele
Di Cristo in nome gli ha divisi : i padri
Inimica coi figli, e le consorti
Dai mariti disgiunge, e pon la guerra
Fra unanimi fratelli. E del Vangelo
Interprete crudel: l'odio s'impara
Nei libro deH'amor. Gli anni son volti
Che il rapito di Patmo Evangelista
Ne prof eto : per ingannar le genti
234

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Rotte ha Satanno le catene antiche,
E siede la crudel sulle infinite
Acque del pianto che per lei si versa.
II seduttor dell'uomo all'impudico
Labbro due nappi appressa: in uno e sangue,
Nell'altro l'oro : e quell-avara e cruda
Beve in entrambi, si che il mondo ignora
S'ella piu d'oro o piu di sangue ha sete.
From Niccolini's "Arnaldo da Brescia." —
******* Note III.
IL CREATORE E IL SUO MONDO
Messer Domeddio, dopo tant'anni
Mosso a pieta dei nostri lunghi affanni
Aperto su nei cielo un finestrino
Fe capolino.
E con un colpo d'occhio da maestro
Scorse il lato sinistro e il lato destro,
Resto confuso e si rivolse a Pietro,
Che aveva di dietro,
, E disse: O Pietro! o ch'io non son piu Dio,
O che e venuto men l'ingegno mio :
Affacciati e rimira 1'universo:
Oh tempo perso'.
E Pietro, messo il capo al finestrino,
Disse : Cos'e, Signor, quel burattino
Che in Roma vedo di gran pompa ornato
E imbavagliato ?
E sorridendo a lui disse il Signore :
O Pietro, Pietro, e il tuo gran successore,
Gli han le mani, la testa, i pie legati
I potentati. 235

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
E col filo a vicenda se lo tirano
Lo volgono, lo piegano, lo aggirano :
E il popolo ignorante tutto vede:
Eppur ci crede'.
Ed ei, povero vecchio'la cuccagna
Si gode di far niente, e di sciampagna
Vuotarsi la bottiglia senza spesa:
Povera Chiesa'.
Esclamo Pietro : Ov'e quella primitiva
Semplicita che al mondo si fe viva?
Ov'e quella miseria che provai?
Cangiata e assai'.
E quel ch'e peggio, o Pietro, in nome mio,
Che solo il ben degli uomini desio,
Si vendon gli anatemi e le indulgenze
Dalle Eminenze.
Si lucra nei battesimo e la cresima,
E si guadagna anco nella quaresima,
E poi chi puo pagar, per quanto N'odo,
Mangia a suo modo.
Senti quei corvi neri appollaiati,
Che urlando contro gli altrui peccati,
Minacciano mine e distruzioni
Come da padroni'.
E tutto in nome mio che non so niente,
Che felice vorrei tutta la gente:
Ma lor faro veder che non son schiavo'.
E Pietro: Bravo'. G. Giusti.
In the year 1896 Pope Leo XIII, by his bull
"Apostolicae Curae" denied the validity of Anglican
Orders. It is strange indeed how a pope so clever as
Leo XIII could ever put forth a document so full of
236

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
misleading statements and inaccurate quotations. More
over, some of the reasons relied upon to disprove the
validity of Anglican Orders are equally destructive of
Roman ordinations.
The bull was issued under the influence of the Jesuits,
and, more especially, Cardinal Mazzella, on whom Leo
leaned in regard to questions of formal theology. Many
among the best Roman Catholic scholars, having realized
the weakness of the bull, insist that the pope was not
speaking "ex cathedra," and, therefore, his statement is
not infallible.
In reply to the bull of the pope the English arch
bishops, in the year 1897, composed the "Response of the
Arch-Bishops of England to the Apostolic Letter of Pope
Leo XIII, on Anglican Ordinations," an admirable docu
ment of historical scholarship. All the frivolous papal
objections, one by one, were triumphantly refuted. The
force of the answer is absolutely crushing. Doubtless
when the old Leo read it, he must have realized, with a
sense of regret, the great mistake he had made.
Rightly, Dr. A. W. Little, in his "Reasons for Being
a Churchman,"" likens the papal condemnation of Angli
can Orders to the condemnation of Galileo's theory, pro
nounced by the predecessors of Leo. In the year 1896
historical truth was denied, and in 1615 scientific truth
was opposed.
******* The validity of Anglican Orders is historically certain.
The strongest attack made on such validity is founded
on the so-called "Nag's Head Fable," a tale which has
been disproved by all the scrupulous scholars of the

"The Young Churchman Co." Milwaukee, Wis. 1910.
237

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Roman Communion itself, among whom Lingard, Butler,
Thierny, Portal, Duchesne, and others.
The other ground upon which the objections to the
apostolic and Catholic consecration of Anglican bishops,
under the Edwardine Ordinal of 1552, rest is that the
form and intention of the Church had not been observed.
But the English archbishops, in their answer, showed
clearly that such form and intention were more care
fully observed in the Edwardine Ordinal than even in
Roman Catholic Ordinal, or in those of several of the
apostolic churches of the East. The form of consecra
tion set forth in the Edwardine Ordinal was as pre
scribed in the African Canons of the Fourth Council of
Carthage and was the very form used in 1414 in the
consecration of Archbishop Chichele of Canterbury, and,
in 1559, of Archbishop Parker, of the same see.
The evidence concerning the validity of Anglican
Orders has been strengthened by two additions lately
come to light. These are the forms of ordination con
tained in the so-called "Canons of Hippolitus" and in
the collection of Serapion. The ancient Catholic ordinal
for consecration in Serapion is identical with the Ed
wardine Ordinal, in the particular to which Leo XIII
ignorantly took exception.
******* "The evidence of the consecration of Archbishop
Parker," says the Rev. Dr. Arthur Whipple in the Amer
ican Church Monthly (April, 1917), "is cumulative.
There are several telling facts or allegations against the
claim to a due and proper record of Parker's elevation to
the episcopate. The 'Nag's Head' fable, of course, as
every one knows, is admitted without the slightest
foundations. And little by little the adverse testimony
238

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
appears. On the other hand stands a mass of evidence
of many kinds: records in Parker's and other episcopal
registers; State papers bearing directly and indirectly
on the matter ; notices in the college annals of Cambridge ;
the diary of a layman present at the ceremony, made
public long after, and entries in Parker's own diary.
None of these, by itself, would be conclusive against the
allegations to the contrary, but taken with their cumu
lative force they make the matter of due and proper order
incontrovertible." In regard to Barlow, the principal consecrator of
Parker, De Augustinis, the renowned Roman Catholic
theologian, says, in his "Conference About Anglican
Orders," "Barlow was unquestionably a true bishop."
******* Moreover, even if Romanists could show incontrovert-
ibly that Barlow and Parker had no orders, and there
fore were incapable of transmitting them, this would not
affect the validity of Anglican Orders. In the "The
ophilus Americanus," Hugh Davy Evan's learned re
daction of Bishop Wordworth's "Theophilus Angli-
canus" is set forth the impugnable fact of the Anglican
Succession as being independent of the only line that
Rome holds in doubt. The statement is as follows:
"The Romish bishops whom Queen Elizabeth found in
possession of the Irish sees, and of whose valid conse
cration nobody has ever made any doubt, were not, with
two exceptions, deprived of their sees. On the contrary,
they conformed to the Reformation, and a line of bishops
descending in regular succession from them remains in
Ireland to this day. Archbishop Hampton of Armagh,
one of this line of bishops, joined on July 7, 1616, in
the consecration of Bishop Morton, of Coventry, who,
239

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
on July 12, 1618, was one of the consecrators of Bishop
Carleton of Llandaff, afterwards of Chichester, who, on
November 18, 1621, was one of the consecrators of
Archbishop Laud. Again, about the same time, An
tonio De Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro, in Italy, ab
jured the Communion of the Church of Rome, and went
to England. On December 14, 1617, he was one of the
consecrators of Bishop Felton, of Bristol, and Monteigne,
of Lincoln, who were both among the consecrators of
Archbishop Laud. From Archbishop Laud, who united
the Irish and Italian lines of the episcopate, every bishop
of the American, Scottish, and English Church traces his
descent." ******* There is a further and even stronger argument in
favor of the Anglican continuity with the Catholic and
apostolic church. It is the unchangeable witness of the
Anglican Church to the revealed truth, a witness which
none of the churches outside Catholic unity has borne.
Think of the German Protestant Church and its
theology! * * * The critical methods of German
theological scholarship have been relentlessly rational
and the results merely negative. Straus, Baur, and his
Tubingen school, Ewald, Harnack, Ritschl, Wellhousen,
Bleek, Nitsch, Rothe, Tischendorf, Lipsius and others
have been simply obsessed by hypercriticism. Nothing
has escaped their mania for destruction. They have at
tacked the contents of the Gospels as well as the sources,
genuineness as well as authenticity, the authorship as
well as the data of the inspired books, in brief, they have
destroyed the reliability of a great part of the New Tes
tament. Through different methods and processes the
aim of German theology has been one: to minimize all
240

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
the non-natural element in the Scriptures. Under their
inexorable analysis every trace of the miraculous has
vanished alike from the Gospels and Acts, from the
Epistles and the Apocalypse. German criticism has
spared none of the miracles, not even the greatest, as the
Incarnation, Resurrection, Virgin birth, Ascension.
What a contrast between the Christianity of the Ger
man theology and that presented by the theology of the
Anglican Church ! ¦ ¦ • Certainly the English Church
did not hold herself aloof from the religio-intellectual
movement of the nineteenth century. Anglicanism con
tributed very helpfully to the building up of the great
monument of exegetical and theological erudition. It
would be hard to make an adequate valuation of what
the new religious thought owes to the deep and masterly
minds of Pusey, Trench, Lightfoot, Hort, Westcott, and
others. Think of the multiform activity of Froude,
Robertson, Liddon, Keeble, Rose, Palmer, Mozley, Isaac
Williams, Hook, Church, Kingsley, Neale, Temple, not
to mention those still living.
But the heirs of Hooker, Andrews and Laud reached
different conclusions from those of German scholars.
Their results have been positive, not negative. Their
work has been not destructive, but constructive. They
did retain the supernatural element of the Scriptures;
they even accented and magnified it. They have been
able to reconcile the results of the new criticism with the
strictly orthodox doctrines. Those who, like Hare, Stan
ley, Maurice, Jowett, Tulloch (whose beliefs and teach
ings have not been sound on every point), have been
comparatively few. To the great question once asked
of Peter by Jesus, "Whom do men say that I, the son of
man, am?" Anglicans have answered, with the same
241

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
apostle, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living
God." How to explain the loyalty of the Anglicans to the
faith once delivered to the saints? The reason is one.
It is because the Church on which they lean is a true
branch of that greater Church which is "the pillar and
ground of truth." It is because they hold fast to the
divine ideal of that Church which is built "on the founda
tions of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ Him
self being the chief cornerstone." In brief, it is because
of the unbroken union of the Anglican Church with the
Catholic and Apostolic Church.
A further indication of the ever-abiding presence of
Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit within the Anglican
Church is the vigor of her life. The inexhaustible vi
tality of the English Church has struck with admiration
all students of religious problems, among whom Dol
linger, the great Catholic theologian, who wrote of her in
these memorable terms : "No Church is so powerful in its
influence on national character. The cold, dull indiffer-
entism which on the continent has spread like a deadly
mildew over all degrees of society has no place in the
British Isles."
What is the secret of the vigor of the English Church?
It is to be found nowhere else but in her unbroken union
with that great mystical Body whose Head is Jesus
Christ. Let the Jesuit and Ultramontanes sophisticate
on the witness of history to the Anglican continuity;
here are telling facts. The identification of the Anglican
Church with the Church of the Apostles, the Fathers
and the Councils is a fact, which only self-interested
prejudice and sectarianism can refuse to accept.
The Anglicans know that they are possessed of orders
242

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
and, consequently, of sacraments. Their spiritual effects
demonstrate to them their validity. When the pope de
nied the validity of Anglican Orders he showed unmis
takably that he is not infallible, for he stated what Angli
cans know with divine certainty to be false.
* * * * ' * * *
One might add that a witness to the validity of the
Anglican Orders has been borne by the history of Roman
Catholicism itself. In fact the popes Julius III, Pius IV,
Urbanus VIII, Innocent XII, themselves showed, ex
plicitly or implicitly, their faith in Anglican validity.
Julius III, for instance, enjoined Archbishop Pole to
absolve and reconcile the bishops and priests ordained
under Edward VI, but not to re-ordain them.
Again. It is historically certain that, before the sev
enteenth session of the Council of Trent, the pope sent
to England his nuncio, Girolamo Martinengo, with the
task of inviting the bishops of the Anglican Church to
come and take part in the deliberations of the council,
thus making it plain that he considered them as true
bishops of the Catholic Church. Later on, when the
hopes for a submission of the English Church to his
claims had vanished, the pope denied the validity of the
consecration of those same bishops.
The Council of Trent itself, when requested by Pius
IV (who had felt himself hurt by the firm conduct of
Queen Elizabeth) to declare Anglican Orders invalid,
positively refused to comply with his desire.
Yet again. Dollinger, doubtless the greatest religious
writer of the nineteenth century, expressed emphatically
his faith in the Apostolic Succession of the Anglican
Church. At the reunion conference, held in Bonn
(1874), Dollinger, speaking of Anglican Orders, said:
"The solution of the question depends solely on an ex-
243

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
amination of historical evidence, and I must give it as
the result of my investigations that I have no manner of
doubt as to the validity of the episcopal succession in the
English Church" (p. 50-51).
A great many other eminent Roman Catholics have
fully acknowledged Anglican Orders, among them Du
Pin, De Gerardin, Beauvois, Courayer, Colbert, Bossuet,
Archbishop Affre of Paris, Cardinal De La Luzerne, and
several other contemporary theologians.
Furthermore, a great many prelates of the Greek
Orthodox and Eastern Churches have recognized Angli
can Orders.
Archbishop Nicolai, the celebrated head of the Russian
ecclesiastical mission in Japan, fully endorsed the "Vindi
cation of Anglican Orders," by the Rev. Arthur
Lowndes. Prof. Androutsos, the author of the semi
official booklet, "The Validity of Anglican Orders from
the Orthodox Standpoint," has done the same.
As to the Roman Catholic Church, no theologian of
any importance today holds the opinion of the Jesuits
who influenced Leo XIII. That means that the case can
be opened anew. The Roman Church is said to be in
tending to do so. In January, 1917, Father Aurelio
Palmieri, of the Library of Congress, in an unofficial
manner, gave out the statement that a new movement has
arisen in the Vatican, directed toward a reconciliation of
the Russian Church and the Papacy and a reconsideration
of the question of the validity of Anglican Ordinations.
"One of the most important tasks of the new commis
sion," Father Palmieri wrote, "will be a thorough re
examination of the arguments, pro and con, of the val
idity of Anglican Orders. The bull "Apostolica Sedis"
of Leo XIII has settled in the negative the problem of
that validity. But generally, theological schools assume
244

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
a more favorable attitude toward acknowledgment of the
validity of Anglican Orders, and the new commission of
cardinals will carefully ponder the reasons set forth by
Russian and Anglican divines against the decision of
Pope Leo XIII."
Let Roman Catholic theologians examine "thoroughly"
the matter, and, doubtless they will reach a conclusion
different from that of 1896. Anglicans and Episcopalians
rely upon the indestructible facts of history. Being fully
conscious of the efficacy of their own orders, they are
concerned with the question (in its relation to Rome)
only remotely, as the decision may affect the possibility
of future union of the churches. The question of the
validity of Anglican Ordinations is a part of the larger
question of Christian unity. An affirmative decision of
Rome, acknowledging the sufficiency of the Anglican rite
of ordination, would lessen the distrust of the Anglican
body toward Rome and would, most likely, bring union
considerably nearer.1
*******

"In connection with the question of the Anglican Orders we beg
the reader to consult the following books :
Haddan (Arthur W.) : "Apostolic Succession in the Church
of England."
Courayer: "The Validity of the Ordinations of the English
Church." Viscount Halifax : "Leo XIII and Anglican Orders."
Puller (F. W.) : "The Continuity of the Church of England."
"The Edwardine Ordinal."
Bailey: "Defense of English Orders."
Lowndes (Rev. Arthur): "Vindication of Anglican Orders";
2 volumes.Crockett (Rev. Stuart) : "Roman Acknowledgment of An
glican Orders."
De Augustinis: "Anglican Orders." Conference.
"Anglican Orders": by a Roman priest.
Denny and Lacey: "De Hierarchia Anglicana."
245

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
MODERN ITALIAN THOUGHT AND
CHRISTIAN DOGMA.
Notes.
In the second chapter we have considered the relig
ious problem in Italy in its peculiar relation to Roman
Catholicism. We deem it useful to add a few remarks
on the attitude of the modern Italian thought toward
Christian dogma in general, freely drawing from the
works of Professor Labanca.
The Italian religious thinkers of the nineteenth century
might be divided into four classes : the first being com
posed of those who are quite averse to the reality of
Christian dogma; the second, those devoted to Chris
tian dogma only in a philosophical sense ; the third, those
who are averse not to dogmas themselves but rather to
their excessive quantity; and the last, the Roman Cath
olic traditionalists.
The first thinkers, who, early in the nineteenth cen
tury, advocated dogmatic nullism were Melchiorre Gioia
(1767-1829), an illustrious philosopher, statesman, and
economist, and Gian Domenico Romagnosi (1761-1835),
an equally renowned philosopher and jurist. According
to them religion in general and Christianity in particular,
is a moral and social habit, which encourages men to
virtue by the promise of divine good, both present and
future, and keeps them from vice by present and fu
ture penalties.1
A religion which has not such a beneficial aim on be
half of social life is useless and abstract, nay, it is, Ro-
"Gioia: "Del Merito e Delle Ricompense." Vol. I, pp. 9, 24.
Milano. 1818. Romagnosi: "Assunto Primo Della Coscienza
del Dritto Naturale." Milano. 1842.
246

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
magnosi says, an "ultra-abstraction," namely "an entirely
imaginary product."1
Gioia classifies religious opinions as useful, indifferent,
and harmful, and puts the articles of Christian faith con
cerning the Trinity, Divinity of Christ, Eucharist, Sacri
fice, and Prayer, either among the indifferent or harmful
ones. He declares these and similar dogmas, concerning
philosophical mysteries, "a food for human curiosity or
a cause for human ferocity."1
Gioia speaks of what is not dogmatic in Christianity in
a very different way. "Religion," he says, "such as was
preached by Christ, tends to increase the amount of so
cial pleasures, preaching fraternal affection and recipro
cal tolerance, condemning the hatred and pride of every
kind, and keeping alive in the souls of its followers the
idea of the same origin, nature, and end."3
Owing to the fact that in Italy the fatal influences of
the materialistic and despotic religion of the papal
Church have been more strongly felt than anywhere else,
Italian poets, philosophers, and politicians, from the
Renaissance down to our days, have usually written,
instead of the history, the hymn of the first Christian
epoch. So did Gioia. In his cited "Idee Sulle Opinioni
Religiose" he makes an admirable description of the gov
ernment of the early Christians and the incomparable
peace they enjoyed, while, on the contrary, he is inex
orable toward the Christians of the subsequent epochs.
It is to Gioia's credit to have been one of the first to

"Romagnosi: "Osservazioni sulla Scienza Nuova di Vico.''
Opere. Vol. II. Ed. Cit.
'Gioia: "Idee Sulle Opinioni Religiose," p. 43-68. Lugano,
1841. ''Gioia: "Del Merito e delle Ricompense," Vol. I, p. 162. Ed.
Cit. 247

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
clearly perceive the importance of physical ambient in
the explication of many concepts and facts of religion
and primitive Christianity.
As to Romagnosi, he does not go into all the details
of his contemporary Gioia; but he hits, with a single
stroke, the whole Catholic dogmatism, by establishing,
in an absolute manner, that the revealed religion must
serve as a subsidiary to the natural one, which consists
in consecrating and sanctioning by moral precepts, the
natural order willed by Divinity." In his judgment the
"perpetual dogmas" of religion are: to see, will, and do
all good, to hate all evil, to reward all virtue, to punish
all crime, even after death." (Ibid.)
******* P. Sterbini, a free and independent spirit, demands a
Christian religion not according to the dogmatism
brought about by the "iniquitous Roman curia," but ac
cording to the dictates of philosophy, which studies "the
eternal and unchangeable laws of human society." In
substance, he wishes a philosophical, not a dogmatic
Christianity. He writes further: "The religion of
Christ, sanctioned by philosophical science, is the funda
mental stone of the new social edifice, and we will build
our church upon this stone."2
Also, V. Magnanini has no use for a dogmatic Chris
tianity. He distinguishes three classes of dogma, some
of which concern the ecclesiastical constitution, some
morals, and some others, mysteries. He considers the
first and last classes as being in opposition to science and
civilization, and calls the latter "useless, harmful," and

"Romagnosi : "Assunto Primo della Coscienza del Dritto Natu
rale." Ed. Cit.
"Sterbini: "Filosofia e Religione." Napoli, 1862.
248

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
wishes them to be relegated to a "museum of religious
antiquities." The dogmas belonging to the second class
ought to be respected, but religion should not be allowed
to dogmatize on morals, for, he maintains, science and
civilization have, long since, acknowledged moral prin
ciples as rational."1
Ausonio Franchi made a parody on several Catholic
dogmas.2 He seemed for a long time to have no faith
even in their transformation. He points with distrust
and skepticism to J. Salvador, who, in his work, "Paris,
Rome, Jerusalem," had attempted to secularize certain
capital dogmas as those of the Trinity and Redemption.'
Franchi is, moreover, highly disdainful of Catholic
morals, as they were formulated by the casuists and de
fended by Manzoni,4 and greatly admires, on the con
trary, the morals of Christ and those priests who, like
Christ, show themselves "humble, meek, generous and
consecrate their lives to the evangelization and consola
tion of their brothers."5
Franchi, however, retracted his ideas by submitting,
late in life, to the papal authority.
F. Linati, though he professes himself a Catholic, yet
complains that "the clergy have shut themselves within
the enclosure of a sterile and obsolete dogmatism." He
wishes that religion espouse itself to science, and re-

"Magnanini : "Armonie della Religione con le Scienze e con lo
Stato." Bologna. 1877.
JA. Franchi: "Razionalismo del Popolo." Milano, 1873.
"A. Franchi: "Saggi di Critica e Polemica. Questioni Relig
iose." Milano, 1871.
4A. Manzoni: "Sulla Morale Cattolica." Napoli, 1860.
"A. Franchi: "La Filosofia delle Scuole Italiane." Firenze,
1863. 249

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
proaches the clergy with "having kept the Holy Books
closed." To him morals are everything, both in re
ligion and science. He finds morals expressed in Jesus
as well as in nature itself. Baldassarre Labanca echoed
Linati, when he wrote : "In these days, so much in need
of justice and charity, it is beautiful and salutary for an
educated Catholic to abide by the moralist Jesus, rather
than by Jesus the Messiah, the Prophet and the Thau-
maturgus."" ******* G. Trezza is invincibly prejudiced against all religious
sentiment, more particularly the Christian. To him
Christianity has always been the opposer of all human
welfare, nay, the cause of almost all evil. Accordingly,
he maintains that dogmas, precepts, rites, in brief, what
ever belongs to Christianity, ought to be done away with.
He holds religions to be "psychological displacements,
errors of internal optics, psychologic and patho-psycho-
logic phenomena, sacred remains of a buried world."1
He condemns the dogmatism of St. Paul as being simply
"atrocious."3 As to Christian morals, Trezza feels ex
ceedingly sorry that they will last long and bring further
sorrow and shame upon mankind.
Rightly Baldassarre Labanca regards these and similar
affirmations of Trezza concerning Christianity as abso
lutely groundless and erroneous, and charges the author
as being as fanatic as the supernaturalists.
****** *

"B. Labanca: "Della Religione e della Filosofia Cristiana."
Torino. Loescher, 1886.
2G. Trezza : "La Religioni e la Religione." Verona, 1884. "La
Critica Moderna." Firenze, 1874. "Nuovi Studi Critici." Vero
na, 1881.
'G. Trezza: "San Paolo." Verona, 1882.
250

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Among the more recent writers, Gaetano Negri, Bal
dassarre Labanca and Alessandro Chiappelli have strong
ly disavowed Christian dogmatism.
Negri regards evangelical conception, in its most gen
uine essence, as abhorring all sacerdotal and dogmatic
elements, and, accordingly, he greatly admires the pure,
elect and lofty form of religious sentiment of the "Adam
Bede" (of George Eliot), "a sentiment which is freed
from all dogmatic and ritualistic yoke and goes straight
to the Gospel."1
To him dogmatism is a dead element of Christian re
ligion. Speaking of St. Augustine, who conceives the
Catholic Church as an absolute authority possessing the
intangible deposit of faith, he remarks: "His formulae
no longer speak to us; life has disappeared from their
immense and complicated structures."1
Negri further maintains that it is not the dogmatic
teaching, but the principle of scientific knowledge that
indirectly, yet necessarily, moralizes society, "for," he
writes, "that principle, by destroying error and super
stition, which disturb society, and by dissipating the
clouds which darken truth, brings about a condition of
things from which the principle of justice and human
solidarity flows as a necessary consequence."8
Speaking of Roman Catholic dogmatism in its relation
to the problem of religious teaching in Italy, Negri, how
ever, pleads not for a destruction of the dogmatic and
ritualistic structure (a thing he finds impossible), but for
a modern interpretation of Catholic symbols.*

"G. Negri : "George Eliot." Milano, 1893.
'G. Negri: "Mediatazioni Vagabonde." Ed. cit.
»G. Negri: "Ultimi Saggi." Milano, 1904.
*G. Negri: "Ultimi Saggi," p. 230. Milano. Hoepli, 1904.

251

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
As to Prof. Labanca, he also, as Negri, reproaches St.
Paul for his dogmatism. He holds that religions will
always last only in virtue of their natural elements.
"The supernatural," he writes, "is dead for science and
historical criticism, and it is only alive for ignorant hu
manity and for those educated men who are still obse
quious to the mystical and ascetic world."1
To the Hegelians, interpreting Christian dogmatism in
the light of absolute idealism, Labanca objects that "if,
in virtue of the canons of Hegelian idealism infantile and
immediate thought must be overcome and annulled by
reflexive and mediate thought, then philosophy ought, ac
cordingly, not to respect religious dogmas, but rather
abolish them, as being a vulgar and childish thought."1
Labanca attacks also Kant and his followers, who at
tribute to Christian dogmas only a moral significance,
maintaining that "the principal dogmas of Christianity,
as the Divinity and Incarnation of Christ, the resurrec
tion of Jesus and of the dead, have lost forever all moral
value and power.'"
Prof. Labanca is further in full disagreement with
Kerbaker and all those philosophers who state that Chris
tian dogmas ought to be respected as a salutary, nay,
necessary delusion for the ignorant people. "We must
deny history," he says, "to maintain that Christianity may
last by means of delusions concerning absurd dogmas.
Today dogmatic Christianity is dead for history which
is truly such. I admit that it was a delusion which pre
pared and formed all Christian dogmas; yet it was an
efficacious and fecund delusion; whereas the actual de-

"B. Labanca in "La Cultura," edited by Bonghi, 1884.
'B. Labanca: "II Cristianesimo Primitivo." Ed. cit.
"B. Labanca: "II Cristianesimo Primitivo," page 403. Ed. cit.
252

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
lusion, by which dogmas ought to be kept, is inefficacious
and sterile. What today is alive, nay, powerful, is only
ethic Christianity, which intelligent men can still main
tain and defend."1
Finally Labanca turns his sharp criticism against
Roman Catholic traditionalists, who hold dogma to be
unchangeable. "If," he remarks, "to the theologians of
the papal Church dogmas are intrinsically immutable and
superintelligible, then their extrinsic progress becomes
only apparent, and, still worse, inconclusive. Having
been born of a mystical faith, it is logical that they should
remain an object of mystical faith, according to several
fathers and doctors. To me they are definitions of quite
absurd mysteries and miraculous facts; and I think that
Catholics should resign themselves to believe the absurd
(credo quia absurdum) without aggravating the evil, by
insisting on the progress of the absurd. Let me add that
today is no longer the time of "fides quaerens intel-
lectum," but of "intellectus quaerens fidem," that is that
we want a faith which follows from what has been clear
ly understood through its intrinsic truth and goodness.
Long since human intelligence has declared its adherence
to a blind faith impossible; for such adherence is only
pardonable, but never reasonable, and, moreover, pardon
able by exceptional way, in a vulgar and ignorant people.
Blind faith must remain such as long as it is efficacious,
even though it be absurd. But when it is no longer effi
cacious, we must expect its gradual annulment by sci
ence, which studies its moral pathology, helped mainly
by the critical history of religions."1
*******

"B. Labanca: "II Cristianesimo Primitivo." Ed. cit.
'B. Labanca: "II Cristianesimo Primitivo," pp. 407-408.

253

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Prof. Alessandro Chiappeljli, a strong sympathizer
with the school of Harnack, is even more bitter against
Christian dogmatism. Never is he so eloquent as when
he contrasts to the theocratic phariseeism the new doc
trine of Jesus "without dogmas and without priests."1
Also Leone Caetani is strong in condemning Christian
dogmas, which he declares to be doomed in time to dis
appear. He maintains that dogmas, as well as sacerdotal
mediatorship and ritualistic ties were once necessary to
human society even as monarchical despotism. But, as
human society develops, also religious conceptions ma
ture and tend more and more strongly toward purely in
dividualistic and subjective forms. The religion of the
future will cease to be an adhesion to certain dogmatic
formulas, and become essentially a high moral discipline.1
******* The radicalism of Negri, Labanca, Chiappelli, and
others has been avoided by Raffaele Mariano. Against
Paul Sabatier, holding that dogmatic formulae, theolog
ical doctrines and confessions of faith are foreign to
Christianity, nay, a sickly excrescence of it, Mariano
strongly maintains that the same dogmas are "organic
grafts of Christian faith and an integrating part of ft."
According to him the terroristic fury of Harnack, Pfleid-
erer, and other liberal Protestants of Germany against
dogmatic and ecclesiastical religion, is destructive of the
objective content of Christianity. It dissolves, he says,

"A. Chiappelli: "Nuove Pagine sui Cristianesimo Antico."
Firenze. 1902.
'Leone Caetani : "La Crisi Morale Dell : Ora Presente," Roma.
1911. 254

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Christianity into a mere personal inclination or disposi
tion and a vaporous religious sentimentality.5
******* With regard to the philosophical devotees of Christian
dogmas, some, as B. Spaventa,' A. Vera3 and F. Fioren-
tino4 have reduced them to rational propositions. The fol
lowers of Hegel, convinced that philosophy must become
science, art, and religion, and also that Hegelianism is the
last word of human thought, have applied to Christian
dogmatism the method of absolute idealism. It is known
that the attempt at seeing, through dogmatic symbols,
rational principles is as old as agnosticism and was re
peated during the Middle Ages by Abelard and others.
The Hegelians agree in holding that Christian dogmas
belong to an infantile and immediate faith; nevertheless
they hold that by means of philosophy, they may assume
a universal and indestructible value.
Besides the above mentioned, also A. C. De Meis, a
man of a remarkable skill, embraced Hegelian doctrine,
thus causing Christian dogma to acquire a new life in
philosophy." Even Pasquale D'Ercole seems to have approached the
same doctrine.0 Finally Raffaele Mariano, the devoted

"R. Mariano: "II Cristianesimo Nei Primi Secoli." Firenze.
Barbera, 1902.
aB. Spaventa : "Saggi di Critica Filosofica, Politica e Religiosa."
Napoli. 1867.
3A. Vera : "Philos. de la Religion de Hegel." Paris, 1876.
*F. Fiorentino: "Scritti Varii." Napoli. 1876. "La Filosofia
Contemporanea." Napoli, 1876.
'A. C. De Meis : "Dopo la Laurea," 2 volumes. Bologna, 1869.
"P. D'Ercole: "II Teismo Filosofico Cristiano." Torino. 1884.
255

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
disciple of Vera, concerned himself with Christian dog
matism in its relation to absolute idealism.1
******* Among the thinkers favorable to a philosophical inter
pretation of Christian dogma are also C. Cantoni, M.
Kerbaker and F. Cartolano, the first of whom accepted
Christian dogmas, reducing their authoritative symbol
ism, after the method of Kant, to a quite moral signifi
cance.1 The second wishes Christianity, with all its
dogmas, to be respected, as being a salutary and neces
sary delusion for the popular classes.3 He has further
expressed the wish that religious movement be studied
in relation to the contemporary philology, which, he says,
"is no longer either that of the Renaissance, which con
cerned itself exclusively with classicism, or that of the
Reformation, which limited itself to the Bible; but it is
both at the same time, with the addition of the philolog
ical researches concerning the Eastern world. Only
through such method dogmas, rites and moral principles,
which constitute the soul of religion, can be understood.'"
In regard to Cartolano, Prof. Labanca remarks that
he has greatly exaggerated the value of philology in its
relation to Christian dogma. Doubtless, he says, philol
ogy is a very great help in the historical study of re
ligion, as Max Muller and other illustrious foreign schol
ars have clearly shown. Yet it would be a grievous mis
take not to search, first of all, events in their physical

"R. Mariano: "Cristianesimo, Cattolicesimo e Civilta." Bol
ogna, 1879.
'C. Cantoni : "Emmanuele Kant," 3 volumes. Milano. 1884.
'M. Kerbaker : "La Scienza Delle Religioni." Napoli, 1882.
*M. Kerbaker : "La Scienza Delle Religioni in Italia." Torino,
1878. 256

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
and metaphysical elements, which assisted the foundation
and propagation of religions.
******* The religious thinkers, belonging to the third class,
either do not tolerate the uselessness of Christian dogmas,
or, more frequently, do not accept their extreme multi
plicity. Bertini, for instance, wishes the number of Christian
dogmas to be reduced. By his convincing criticism he
proves a great many dogmas to be superfluous. He fur
ther remarks that Jesus did not come upon the earth to
inaugurate a course of dogmatic theology, but to teach
men to love each other and to forbear one another."
The illustrious statesman, Minghetti, although less rig
orous in his logic than Bertini, yet has shown a consider
able persuasiveness. Even to him Christian dogmas are
too numerous. Putting aside all theoretic questions, he
practically would like to enthrone more simple dogmas,
and, particularly, the most efficacious of them, namely,
charity, through which Christianity has transformed the
world.3 A decrease of dogmatism has been advocated also by
the philosopher, Terenzio Mamiani. Like Bertini and
Minghetti he, at times, shows himself disposed to abolish
all Christian dogmas, especially those of theoretical and
abstract nature, as the Trinity, Divinity of Jesus Christ,
Resurrection, last judgment, and like. Religion to Mami
ani is the perception and adoration of the "holy."' The
adoration of the holy consists principally in the practice
of virtue, especially charity and universal justice. He

"Bertini: "II Vaticano e lo Stato." Napoli, 1878.
'Minghetti: "Stato e Chiesa." Milano, 1878.
'Mamiani: "La Religione dell'Avvenire." Milano, 1880.
257

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
further adds that we must believe also the dogmas re
vealed by the intuition of the holy, which was very deep
in Jesus ; but religious dogmas, which Mamiani limits to
twelve, are all rational and moral propositions, not super
natural.1 Labanca' praises the mentioned Bertini, Minghetti and
Mamiani for having revealed, in their writings, an inde
pendence of papalism; but he remarks that they, before
ascertaining and consolidating the primitive as well as
the successive historical facts of Christian religion, wished
to establish in an abstract and absolute manner its na
ture. Accordingly, he regards their books rather phil
osophical than theological.
******* Among those theologians who have resolutely de
manded a reduction of Christian dogmas is G. B. Sav-
arese, the founder of an independent Catholic Church in
Italy. Previously he had accepted all the dogmas of the
Roman Church.' But later on he refused the dogmas
concerning papal autocracy.4 His ideas were embraced
by Cicchitti Suriani.'

*T. Mamiani: "Critica Della Rivelazione: Lettere al Bertini,"
pp. 6-18. Torino, 1873. "Critica Delia Rivelazione," pp. 86-90.
Milano, 1880. "Sui Concetto Della Religione." Bologna, 1869.
"Teoria Della Religione e Dello Stato." Firenze, 1869. "Del
Papato" (a posthumous work). Milano, 1885.
'B. Labanca : "II Cristianesimo Primitivo." Ed. cit.
*G. B. Savarese: "Introduzione Alia Storia Critica Della Filo
sofia Dei S. Padri."
*G. B. Savarese : "Idea Cristiana Della Ragione -Politica."
Napoli, 1857. Napoli, 1881. "La Chiesa e la Democrazia." Roma.
1882. "La Scomunica di un'Idea." Roma, 1884.
"Cicchitti-Suriani : "La Religione Nella Scienza e la Tirannia
Della Coscienza." Roma, 1885. 258

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Other Italian writers, led by theological principles,
have shown themselves favorable to Christian dogmas,
wishing them to be kept in their traditional Catholic
meaning. To such number belonged Rosmini and Gio
berti. Both wrote with respect about Christian dogma
tism. But it is to be remarked that Rosmini (a man with
a vigorous mind and wide knowledge), rarely in his re
ligious works concerns himself with Christian dogmas.
He is steady and zealous in recommending Christianity
for the sake of its indispensable disciplinary reforms and
lofty moral sentiments.1
Gioberti does, more or less, the same. He wishes a
Christian reform, but not in the dogmas, which he de
clares immutable.1 Against the Jesuits he points to an
intrinsic as well as extrinsic immutability of the dogmas,
the latter consisting in their progressive unfolding. Here
and there, however, Gioberti hints at a successive restric
tion of the exuberant Christian dogmatism.*
The same theological doctrine was respected in Italy
during the second half of the last century, by other Cath
olics, as Manzoni,4 Balbo," Tosti,' Ventura,' Sanseverino,"
"Rosmini: "Delia Educazione Cristiana." Venezia, 1823.
"Ascetica." Milano, 1840. "Apologetica." Napoli, 1844. "Le
Cinque Piaghe Della S. Chiesa." Perugia, 1849. "Epistole
Religiose," 2 volumes. Torino, 1857. "Operette Spirituali."
Intra. 1871. "Catechismo Cristiano." Bertolotti. 7th ed. 1877.
"Antropologia Soprannaturale," 3 volumes. Torino, 1884.
'Gioberti: "Delia Riforma Cattolica." Torino, 1855.
'Gioberti: "Della Riforma Cattolica." Ed. cit, p. 127.
4Manzoni: "Sulla Morale Cattolica." Torino, 1839.
"Balbo: "Meditazioni Storiche." Napoli, 1843.
'Tosti: "Storia del Concilio di Costanza." Napoli. 1853.
"Storia Della Origine Dello Scisma Greco." Firenze. 1856.
"Storia di Bonifacio viii e Dei Suoi Tempi." Roma, 1888. "Pro-
legomeni Alia Storia Universale Della Chiesa." Firenze, 1861.
259

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Cosacco," Audisio,10 Raineri," Occioni," Capecepatro,1*
Fornari,"4 Orosio," Stoppani,1' Paganini,1' Mazzella,1*
Tagliaferri." The doctrine of the immutability of dogma has been
strongly maintained also by Passaglia,20 Perrone,21 Liber-

'Ventura : "La Ragione Filosofica e la Ragione Cattolica.'' Mi
lano, 1853. "Le Bellezze Della Fede." Firenze, 1853. "II
Tesoro Nascosto." Firenze, 1853.
"Sanseverino : "Phil. Christ, cum Ant. et Nova Comp." Na
poli, 1868.
"Cosacco: "Della Influenza Religiosa Nei Vari Secoli Della
Chiesa." Udine, 1842.
"Audisio: "Introduzione Agli Studi Ecclesiastici." Torino,
1847. "Storia Religiosa e Civile Dei Papi," 5 volumes. Roma,
1864-1868. "Della Societa Politica e Religiosa." Firenze, 1876.
""Raineri : "Corso di Istruzioni Catechistiche," 7 volumes. Mi
lano, 1850.
"Occioni: "Delia Filosofia Cattolica: Saggio Storico." Vene-
zia, 1860.
"Capecelatro : "La Vita di Gesu Cristo," 2 volumes. Napoli.
1868. "Gladstone e Gli Effetti Dei Decreti." Napoli, 1874.
"Fornari: "Della Vita di Gesu Cristo," 4 volumes. Firenze,
1869-1877. "Orosio: "Gesu Cristo" (Studi storici), 2 volumes. Milano,
1878. "Stoppani : "II Dogma e le Scienze Positive." Milano, 1884.
"Paganini: "Armonie Della Filosofia Naturale Colla Filos.
Sopran." 2d ed. Pisa, 1885.
""Mazzella: "De Gratia Christi." Roma, 1880.
"Tagliaf erri : "II Filosofo e if Dogmatismo Religioso" (in the
"Saggi di Critica Filosofica e Religiosa"), 2 volumes. Firenze,
1882. !0Passaglia : "On Eternal Punishment." Renan's "Vie de Jesus :
a Critique."
"Perrone: "II Protestantesimo e la Regola di Fede." Milano,
1854. 260

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
atore, Romano, Cornoldi,1 Curci,2 Zigliara and the other
neo-scholastics. The Roman Catholic interpretation of dogma has been
kept, more recently, by historians, philosophers and apol
ogists as Cantu, Savio, Castellari, Rossignoli, Conti,3 D.
V. Palmieri, Polidori," P. Ballerini/ G. Bellino,6 N. Tur-
chi ;7 by Catholic sociologists as Meda,8 Crispoltr9 Mauri,
Toniolo, Pavissich, and by writers of the collection "Sci
enza e Religione." (Descle. Roma.)
Other contemporary writers, as Bonomelli,10 Gazzola,
Genocchi, De Augustinis, Semeria, A. Palmieri (an au
thority on Oriental and Russian ecclesiastical matters),
though abiding by the traditional doctrine, yet have not
been on the whole, entirely out of sympathy with a more
liberal interpretation of it.
Raffaele Mariano, Baldassarre Labanca and Alessandro
Chiappelli agree in charging these and the other Italian
traditionalists with the fact that they have, very largely,
kept themselves aloof from the great modern movement
of religious thought and ignored, more or less, a really
'Cornoldi: "Lezioni di Filosofia Scolastica." Ferrara, 1875.
2Curci : "II Moderno Dissido tra la Chiesa e lo Stato." Firenze,
1878. Conti: "Storia Della Filosofia." Barbera. Firenze.
4Polidori : "C'orso di Religione." Roma. 1902. "La Nuova
Apologia del Cristianesimo." Roma, 1905.
6Ballerini : "La Crisi del Pensiero Moderno e le Basi Della
Fede." Roma, 1907.
6Bellino : "Gesu Cristo Nelle Scritture, nei SS. Padri e nei
Dottori." Torino, 1912.
7Turchi: "Manuale di Storia Delle Religioni." Torino, 1912.
8Meda : "Nella Storia e Nella Vita." Libreria Editrice Fioren-
tina, 1903.
Crispolti : "Questioni Vitali." F. Pustet. Roma, 1908.
"Bishop G. Bonomelli : "Questioni Religiose, Morali e Sociali."
Roma. Desclee, 1897. 261

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
objective and constructive historical criticism of religion
and Christianity. The papal system and the Index have
prevented them from becoming acquainted with the most
plausible and sure results of Protestant exegesis. They
are still dominated by the old conception of the direct
and mechanical Scriptural inspiration, discarded by all
the greatest modern biblical scholars.
Moreover, their exegesis diverges from the hierarchial
standpoint of the papal Church, which accounts for the
fact that their theses are preconceived and destitute of
historical foundations.
Prof. Labanca affirms that Roman Catholic tradition
alists, beginning with Gioberti down to Capecelatro, For
nari, Conti and the other contemporaries are orators and
poets rather than historians and philosophers of religion.
Speaking of Curci, Stoppani, Audisio and other neo-
scholastics, he says that their excellent traditional sense
damages historical reality.
Labanca finds a striking instance of the unscientific
method of reasoning employed by most of Roman Cath
olic writers and apologists in the Jesuit father, D. V.
Palmieri, who makes the following remark in regard to
papal supremacy: "Both the historian and the scientist
wish to explain the primacy of Rome ; but they, having
put aside the unique principle which explains it, dream of
light and frivolous hypotheses. A Catholic who believes
finds at once the explanation of it."" "Thus," Prof. La
banca notes, "Father Palmieri regards the enormous crit
ical work done by modern scholarship as a light and
frivolous thing. To him the explanation of
religious facts is to be found not in reason and history,
but in faith.
"D. V. Palmieri: "Osservazioni Sulla Recente Opera: L'evan-
gile et l'Aglise : par Alfred Loisy," p. 54. Roma, 1903.
262

Protestantism and the Latin Soul

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Labanca, B.: "II Papato." Roma. Bocca, 1905.
Mazzini, G. : "Studi Filosofici." Roma. 1902.
D'Azeglio, M. : "Degli Ultimi Casi di Romagna," p. 9.
Niccolini, G. B. : "Arnaldo da Brescia."
Belli, G. : "Sonetti Politici."
Luzzi, G. : "The Struggle for Christian Truth in Italy." New
York. Revell. 1913.
Lambruschini, R. : "Libri Della Educazione." "Dialoghi Sulla
Istruzione." "Pensieri di un Solitario."
Ricasoli, B. : "Lettere e Carteggi. Firenze. 1886-1889.
Mamiani, T. : "La Rinascenza Cattolica." 1862. "Teorica Delia
Religione e Dello Stato." 1868. "La Religione deU'Awenire."
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Ultimi tre Secoli." 1885.
Gioberti, V. : "Del Primato Morale Degli Italiani." 1843. "La
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1849. De Boni: "La Chiesa Romana e l'ltalia." Milano, 1863.
"LTnquisizione." Gavazzi, A. : "Recollections of the Last Four Popes." London.
1859. "II Papato e l'ltalia." Firenze, 1861. "La Favola del
Viaggio di San Pietro a Roma." 1869. "No Union With Rome."
1871. Perfetti, F. : "Delle Nuove Condizioni del Papato." Firenze,
1862. "II Clero e la Societa," Firenze, 1862.
Settembrini, L. : "La Protesta Dei Popoli Delle Due Sicilie,"
1857. Villari, P. : "Studies Historical and Critical" ; translated by
Linda Villari. New York. Scribner's. 1907.
"Lettere Meridionali." Firenze, 1878.
Bonghi, R.: "Leone XIII e l'ltalia. 1878. "Arnaldo da
Brescia." 1884. "Vita di Gesu Cristo." Roma, 1900.
Ricotti, E. : "Delia Rivoluzione Protestante." Torino. Loescher,
1874. 263

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Guerzoni, G. : "Arnaldo da Brescia." Milano, 1882.
Negri, G.: "George Eliot" Milano. Treves, 1893. "Ultimi
Saggi." Milano. Hoepli, 1904.
Pavissich, A. : "La Questione Sociale." Treviso. Buffetti,
1902. Marselli, N. : "Gli Italiani del Mezzogiomo.'' Roma. Som-
maruga, 1884. "La Scienza Della Storia." 3 volumes. Torino.
Loescher. Mariano, R. : "II Ritorno Delle Chiese Cristiane aU'Unita Cat
tolica." "II Cristianesimo Nei Primi Secoli." Firenze. Barbera,
1902. "L'individuo e lo Stato." Milano. Treves, 1876. '11
Pensiero Religioso in Italia." Firenze, 1891.
Bartoli, G. : "II Cristianesimo Primitivo e il suo Sistema Scien-
tifico." Firenze, 1911.
Harding, T. : "Catholic or Roman Catholic." Milwaukee, Wis.
The Young Churchman Co. 1916.
Chiappelli, A. : "Nuove Pagine sui Cristianesimo Antico."
Firenze. Le Monnier. 1902. "Saggi e Note Critiche." Bologna.
Zanichelli. 1895.
Caetani, L. : "La Crisi Morale dell'Ora Presente." Roma.
1911. "Che Cosa Vogliamo" ("What We Want") : An open letter to
Pius X by a group of Italian priests.
"II Programma Dei Modernisti." Roma. 1907.
"Lettere di un Prete Modernista a Sua Santita Pio X," 1907.
Avolio, G. : "La Riforma Religiosa" (in "Battaglie d'Oggi."
Napoli. April, 1911).
Murri, R.: "Le Battaglie d'Oggi." Roma. 1901. "Psicologia
Delia Religione." 1905. "Democrazia e Cristianesimo." 1901.
"La Vita Religiosa nei Cristianesimo." 1907. "Della Religione,
Delia Chiesa e Dello Stato." Milano. 1910. "La Bibbia Nella
Storia d'ltalia." Firenze. 1904. "Un Papa, un Secolo e il
Cattolicesimo Sociale." Torino. 1904.
Fogazzaro, A. : "II Santo." Milano. 1906.
Gore, Charles (Bishop) : "Roman Catholic Claims." London.
Rivington's. 1889.
Origen: "De Principiis" (Migne. Patrologia).
Athanasius: "Contra Arianos" (Migne. Patrologia).
Tillemont: "Memoirs." 16 volumes. Paris. 1693-1712.
264

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Gratry: "Letters Against the Papal Infallibility." 1870.
Houtin : "The Crisis in the Catholic Church." (Transl. from
the French by F. T. Dickson. David Nutt London. 1910.)
Spencer Kennard: "Italian Romance Writers." New York,
Brentano's. 1906.
Boccaccio: "Decamerone." 2 volumes; 10th ed. ; glossed by
P. Fanfani. Firenze. Le Monnier. 1912.
Ariosto: "Orlando Furioso." 2 volumes. Le Monnier.
Firenze. (It is the second volume in the "Collection of Italian
Classics," "Biblioteca Nazionale.")
Olindo, Guerrini: "Posthuma." Bologna. Zanichelli.
Comani: "Sulla Riforma Protestante." Bergamo. 1892.
"Compendio di Storia." Firenze. Sansoni. 1901.
Cappelletti : "La Riforma." Roma. Bocca. 1912.
Masi, E. : "La Riforma in Italia" (in "La Vita Italiana nei
Cinquecento": a collection of conferences). Milano. Treves.
1894. D'Ercole, P. : "II Teismo Filosofico Cristiano." 3 volumes.
Torino. Loescher. 1884.
Mosso, A.: "Vita Moderna Degli Italiani." Milano. Treves.
1906. Symonds, J. A. : "Renaissance in Italy." 7 volumes. London.
1875-1886. Savonarola, G. : "Sermons ;" edited by G. Baccini. Firenze.
1889. Pontano: "Baiae" (Opera Omnia. Venice. 1518-1519).
Poliziano : "Ballate."
Aretino : "Ragionamenti."
Sabatier, P. : "Life of St. Francis." Paris. 1894.
Castelar, E.: "Old Rome and New Italy." New York.
Harper's. 1876.
Nencioni, E. : "Torquato Tasso" (in "La Vita Italiana nei
Cinquecento"). Ed. cit.
Bonaccorsi: "Harnack and Loisy." Firenze. Libreria
Editrice Fiorentina. 1904.
De Maistre : "Considerations sur la France." C II. Lausanne.
1796. "La salvezza e in noi." By a group of Italian Seminarists.
1909.

265

Protestantism and the Latin Soul

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Besides the mentioned books, the following might be usefully
consulted in relation to the various subjects treated in the book:
Pusey: "Healthful Reunion." Oxford. 1870. "An Eirenicon."
New York. Appleton. 1866.
Dollinger: "Origins of Christianity." 1833-1835. "The Refor
mation," 3 vols. 1846-1848. "Lectures on the Reunion of the
Churches" (Greek, Anglican and Old Catholic). 1872.
Baird: "Protestantism in Italy."
D'Aubigne: "Storia della Riforma" (Italian transl. 1847).
Wylie (Rev. J. A.) : "The Awakening of Italy and the Crisis
of Rome." New York. The American Tract Society. 1862.
Robertson: "Roman Catholic Churches in Italy." Robert
Scott. London. 1915.
Taine, H. A.: "History of English Literature." New York.
1879. Tyrrell: "Medievalism." 1885.
Gore : "Order and Unity." "The New Theology and the Old
Religion." Rivingtons. London.
Ewer : "The Failure of Protestantism." New York. Gorham.
Newman, Smyth : "Passing Protestantism and Coming
Catholicism." New York. Scribners.
Loisy: "The Gospel and the Church." New York. Scribners.
1912. 1908.
Campbell, Rev. R. J.: "A Spiritual Pilgrimage." New York.
Appleton. 1917.
Grane, Rev. W. L. : "Church Divisions and Christianity." New
York. The MacMillan Co. 1917.
Rawlinson, Rev. S. S. : "Recent French Tendencies." Mil
waukee. The Young Churchman Co.
Osborne, Charles : "Religion in Europe and the World Crisis"
(One of the subjects considered is "Protestantism a Passing
System.") New York. Dodd, Mead Co. 1917.
"The Cambridge Modern History," Vols. X-XII. It contains
useful chapters on Italian modern history.
Balzani, Ugo: "The Popes and the Hohenstaufen." London.
1889. Bolton King and Thomas Okey: "Italy Today." London.
1901. (Ital. transl. Laterza. Bari.)
266

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Bolton King : "Mazzini." London. 1902.
Garnett, Richard: "A History of Italian Literature." New
York. Appleton. 1904.
Gebhard, Emile: "LTtalie Mystique." 6th ed. Paris. 1908.
Gardner: "St. Catherine of Siena."
Trevelyan, G. M. : "Garibaldi and the Making of Italy." Lon
don. 1912.
Jamison, E. M. : "Italy, Medieval and Modern." Oxford.
1917. "Storia Politica d'ltalia": scritta da una societa di amid. 8
vols. 1883 et seq. (Edited by P. Villari.)
"Conferenze Sulla Vita Italiana," 3 vols, (for the XVI, XVII
and XVIII centuries). Edited by Fratelli Treves. Milano. 1895.
Volpi : "II Trecento." Rossi : "II Quattrocento." Flaminio :
"II Cinquecento."
Belloni: "II Seicento." Concari: "II Settecento." Mazzoni:
"L'ottocento." The serious student should consult, for more detailed study of
Italian history, the excellent "Archivo Storico Italiano," which
contains many important articles.
Bagot, R. : "The Italians of Today." Chicago. Browne. 1913.
"Della Rinascenza Cattolica": narrazione di un alunno di
Propaganda Fide. Firenze. Le Monnier.
Grill, G. : "Fattori dei Movimenti Riformatorii Italiani del
Secolo XVI." Roma. Bocca.
Sergi : "Decadenza delle Nazioni Latine." Roma. Bocca. 1900.
Bartoli, G. : "La Religione Degli Italiani." Roma. Bocca. 1909.
Orsi, P. : "Cavour and the Making of Italy." New York. 1914.
Orsi : "Modern History." Translated from the Italian and pub
lished in "Stories of the Nations" Series. New York. 1900.
De Laveleye, E.: "LTtalie Actualle." Paris. 1881.
Gallenga, A. : "Italy, Present and Future," 2 vols. 1887.
Bodio : "Progresso Economico e Sociale d'ltalia." Roma. 1890.
Hunt, W. : "Italy" (in Prof. Freeman's Historical course).
Browning, Oscar: "Guelphs and Ghibellines" (1250-1409). Lon
don. 1893.
Garlanda, Federico: "The New Italy." G. P. Putnam's Sons.
New York. 1911.
Guard, W. J.: "The Spirit of Italy." H. Rogowski. New
York. 1916. 267

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Steedman, Amy: "Legends and Stories of Italy." G. P. Put
nam's Sons. New York.
Villari, Luigi : "Italian Life in Town and Country." G. P.
Putnam's Sons. 1902.
Wallace, W. K. : "Greater Italy." Charles Scribner's Sons. 1917.
Zimmern, H. : "Italian Leaders of Today." Williams & Nor-
gate. London. "Italy of the Italians." Charles Scribner's Sons.
New York. 1906.
Benardy, Amy A. : "Italia Randaggia." Bocca Brothers. Rome.
Preziosi, G. : "II Problema dellTtalia d'Oggi." Remo Sandron.
Milan.THE PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN ITALY
In order that the reader may become fully acquainted with the
progress of religious studies and the movement of religious
thought in Italy, we deem it useful to complete the list of Italian
works cited in the Appendix (p. 160-178 and 188-191), with a
few additions. The books which we indicate are mostly religio-
historical and religio-political.
Bianchi Giovini: "Fra Paolo Sarpi." 1836.
Levi, G. : "II Semitismo." Firenze. 1853.
Tiboni, P. E. : "II Misticismo Biblico." Milano. 1853.
Dandolo, Tullio: "II Pensiero Cristiano ai Giorni dell'Impero."
Milano. Pirotta. 1855.
Ruggieri: "Vita e Dottrina di San Giustino." Roma. 1862.
Gabelli, Aristide: "La Questione Religiosa in Italia." Milano.
1864. Tommaseo, N. : "Contro il Potere Temporale dei Papi." Fi
renze. 1865.
Berti, D. : "Giordano Bruno" : sua vita e sue dottrine. Torino.
1868. Nobili, Vitelleschi: "Pomponio Leto": otto mesi a Roma du
rante il Concilio Vatacano. Firenze. Le Monnier. 1870.
Fiorentino, F. : "Bernardino Telesio." Firenze. 1872. "Pietro
Pomponazzi." Firenze. Lemonnier. 1868.
Castelli, D. : "II Messia Secondo gli Ebrei." Firenze. 1874.
"La Legge del Popolo Ebreo." Firenze. 1884. "Delia Poesia
Biblica: Studi." Firenze. Lemonnier..
De Castro, G. : "Arnaldo da Brescia." Livorno. 1875.
De Benedetto: "L' Antico Testamento e la Letteratura Ital
iana." Pisa. 1885. "Vita e Morte di Mose." 1879.
268

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Comba, E.: "I Nostri Protestanti." Firenze. 1881.
Silvagni, D. : "La Corte e la Societa Romana nei Secoli 18th e
19th." Firenze. 1882.
Puini, C. : "Saggi di Storia della Religione." Firenze. 1882.
Amabile: "Tommaso Campanella." Napoli. 1884. (Among
those who have studied seriously Bruno and Campanella must
be mentioned; also Baldacchini, D'Ancona, Arabia, and Felici.)
Tocco, F. : "L'eresia nei Medio Evo." Firenze. Lemonnier.
Q. 1884. "Le Opere Latine di Giordano Bruno." Firenze. 1889.
"Le Opere Inedite di Giordano Bruno." Napol. 1891. "La Vita
-•buoabs ll» '£681 "OBEl!Fl 'slOA Z „'o}u3uips-eura pu BueireiT
rola e la Profezia." Milano. 1893.
Bonghi, R. : "Francesco di Assisi." 1884.
Maiocchi, G.: "La Dottrina dei 12 Apostoli." Milano. 1885.
Levi, D. : "Giordano Bruno e la Riforma del Pensiero." Torino.
1887. Villari, P. : "La Storia di Savonarola e dei Suoi Tempi"
(English transl.), 2 vols. Firenze. Lemonnier. 1887, w. 2d ed.
Scaduto, F. : "Stato e Chiesa Secondo Fra Paolo Sarpi."
Firenze. 1885. Stato e Chiesa Nelle Due Sicilie." Palermo.
1887. "Stato e Chiesa Sotto Leopoldo I."
Giovagnoli, R. : "I Latini, i Barbari e la Chiesa." Roma. 1889.
"Carlo Magno e Leone II." Roma. 1891. "Benedetto IX." 1900.
Mancini, G. : "Vita di Lorenzo Valla." Firenze. 1891.
Bertolotti, A. : "Martiri del Libero Pensiero." 1891.
Luotto, P.: "II Vero Savonarola e il Savonarola del Pastor."
Firenze. 1897.
Troilo: "II Misticismo Moderno." Roma. Bocca. 1899.
Barzellotti, G.: "Italia Mistica e Italia Pagana." Roma. 1891.
"Dal Rinascimento al Risorgimento." Palermo. 1904.
Rosadi, G. : "Processo di Gesu." Firenze. Sansoni. 1904.
Pivano, S. : "Stato e Chiesa da Berengario I ad Arduino."
Sorino. 1908.
Battaini, D. : "Lo Stato Contro la Chiesa." Roma. Bocca.
1908. Saitta: "La Scolastica del Secolo XVI e la Politica dei
Gesuiti." Roma. Bocca. 1911. "II Programma dei Modernisti."
1911. De Roberto: "Renan." Roma. Bocca. 1911.
269

Protestantism and the Latin Soul
Bartoli, G. : "The Primitive Church and the Papacy" (in Eng
lish). "II Cristianesimo Primitivo e il suo Sistema Scientifico."
Firenze. 1911. "II Cristianesimo e le Chiese Cristiane."
De Crescenzo, C. : "La Legislazione Italiana, il Cattolicesimo
Degli Apostoli e il Cattolicesimo Romano." Firenze. Lemon
nier. 1912.
Boncompagni : "La Chiesa e lo Stato in Italia." Firenze. Le
monnier. 1912.
D'Alfonso, R. : "Le Donne dei Vangeli." Firenze. Lemonnier.
1912. Manaresi, A. : "L'Impero Romano e il Cristianesimo." Roma.
Bocca. 1914.
Prof. Delia Seta, Ugo: "Giuseppe Mazzini Pensatore." Torino.
Bocca. 1912.
Petrelli G. : "Cristo per Fede." Firenze. 1912.
Zini : "II Pentimento e la Morale Ascetica." Roma. Bocca.
1912. Luzio, A. : "Mazzini." Milano. Treves. 1906.
All these Italian writers, to whom a few more could be added,
have shown remarkable religious learning in their books as well
as articles, scattered throughout the leading reviews and papers
of Italy, as "Cultura," "Nuova Antologia," "Cultura Sociale,"
"Rivista di Scienza Delle Religioni," "Rivista di Filosofia Scien-
tifica," "Battaglie d'Oggi," "Rivista Cristiana," "Rivista Critica e
Storica Degli Studi Religiosi," "Rassegna Nazionale," "II Rin-
novamento," "Fanfulla Della Domenica," "Domenica del Fra-
cassa," "La Nuova Parola," "Corriere Della Sera," "Giornale
d'ltalia," etc

270

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