This text comes from our book, Light to the Nations, Part II.
It was not just the Austrian Italy that suffered from revolution. Sicily had risen up against King Fernando II of the Two Sicilies on January 12, 1848. The Sicilian revolutionaries demanded a constitution, and Fernando gave in to them. The new constitution established a chamber of deputies for Sicily and Naples but did not really limit the king’s power. This, of course, did not please the Sicilians. Forming their own parliament, the Sicilians deposed Fernando in April and proclaimed Sicily an independent republic.
Fearing revolution in his own lands, the Habsburg grand duke, Leopold II of Tuscany, had granted his people a constitution on February 11, 1848. King Carlo Alberto did the same for Piedmont-Sardinia on March 4. Though both constitutions set up two-house legislatures, they did not permit universal manhood suffrage and did little to limit the power and authority of the monarch.
Pope Pius IX, too, granted a constitution for his Papal States. On February 10, 1848, the pope had announced that he intended to increase the number of laymen in the government, to give more opportunity to those “whose ability and experience might benefit the state.” He would not, however, give in to the more extreme Liberals who demanded a representative government that the pope could not control. Such a government, the pope feared, could endanger the freedom and independence of the Church.
The constitution Pius granted the Papal States on March 14 (one day after the fall of Metternich) established a two-house legislature—a High Council and a Council of Deputies. In creating this legislature, the pope was careful to safeguard his own authority. The councils could pass no laws on matters having to do with the Church or contradicting canon law and the disciplines of the Church. The pope and the cardinals kept the right to veto any law, and the pope could dissolve the councils.
The constitution and Pius’s creation of a civic guard (an armed civilian force) only made him more popular than he already was in Europe and the Americas. The “Liberal pope,” many thought, was opening up the Church to the modern world. But Liberals in Rome and the Papal States were not satisfied. They wanted nothing less than a secular state. Every reform the pope proposed and carried out only emboldened them to demand more reforms. It was becoming clearer to Pius that Rome’s republicans would accept no compromise.
The rebellion in Milan created new problems for the pope. After Radetzky’s retreat from Milan, Pius sent the papal army to defend the northern borders of his states. But the papal commander, General Durando, ignored the pope’s command and joined Carlo Alberto’s forces in Lombardy. Durando’s troops battled with Radetzky’s forces at Vincenza and so made it appear that the pope had joined in the war against Austria.
The pope did hope to see an end to Austrian rule in Italy, but he opposed war to achieve it. On April 29, Pius declared he would not go to war with Austria; the Church, he said, must not become the champion of one nation against another, nor should the Vicar of Christ bless a war waged against a Catholic nation. Pius made it clear he would not act as the tool of the Italian revolutionaries.
The pope’s refusal to fight Austria turned the Italian Liberals against him. Those who once had praised the pope now cursed him. Those who had hoped he would be the savior of Italy now declared him to be an oppressor of his countrymen. Pius IX’s sincere attempts to accommodate the just demands of the Liberals now meant nothing. The more he had given in to them, the more they had demanded what the pope could not give. Pius would soon learn the price he had to pay for standing up against the revolutionary party of Italy, and the world.
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