Documents Regarding Alta Vendita [The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita]
from L'Eglise romaine et la Révolution, by Crétineau-Joly
Translated from Italian by Google
I. Letter from Cardinal Consalvi to the Prince of Metternich, dated January 4, 1818.
The Holy See manifests the knowledge it has of the danger that Carbonarism, at the head of which High Sale will soon be placed, makes society run so as not to be reduced to a repression that will only increase evil. The elements that make up the secret societies, especially those that serve to form the soul of Carbonarism, are still scattered, badly fused orin ovo; but we live in a time so favorable to conspiracies, so rebellious to the feeling of duty, that the most vulgar circumstance can very easily form a formidable aggregation of these councils scattered here and there. VA does me the honor of telling me, in his last letter, that I am perhaps too nervous about some natural shock after such a violent storm. I would like my presentiments to remain in a state of chimera: nevertheless, I cannot cradle myself in such cruel hope any longer.
"From all that I gather from various parts, and from what I conjecture for the future, I believe (you will see later, if I am wrong) that the Revolution has changed its path and tactics.
It no longer attacks, armed hand, the thrones and the altars; it will content itself with undermining them with incessant slanders; it will sow hatred and distrust between the governments and the governed; it will make one hateful, pity the other. Then one day the more secular monarchies, abandoned by their defenders, will find themselves at the discretion of some low-level intrigues to whom no one deserves to give a look of preventive attention.
It seems to think, Mr. Prince, that in these fears manifested by me (but always by verbal order of the Holy Father) there is a preconceived system and ideas that can only arise in Rome. I swear to VA that by writing to you and addressing the high Powers, I completely strip myself of all personal interest and look at the matter from a much higher point. Do not stop to consider it now, because it has not yet entered the public domain, so to speak, it is condemning yourself to late repentance.
Dear Prince, acquired and inspired confidence: increase this glory so universal, putting novice conspirators in the impossibility of harming others as if they were themselves. The great statesmen shine in this art of foresight and early calculation; she will be careful not to miss her vocation".
The language of the Holy See was not understood; his warnings were scorned. Shortly after the high sale was formed.
II. Permanent secret instruction given to members of the High Sale.
"After we have established ourselves in the body of action and the order begins to reign again in the most remote Sale runs to the one closest to the center, there is a thought that has always worried men who aspire to universal regeneration. Thought is that of the liberation of Italy, from which, in a given day, the liberation of the whole world, the fraternal Republic and the harmony of humanity must come out. This thought has not yet been sufficiently understood by our brothers in France, that revolutionary Italy cannot but conspire in the shade, distribute a few stab wounds to cops or traitors; and meanwhile calmly endure the yoke of the events taking place beyond the mountains for Italy, but without Italy.
"This error was already fatal to us several times. We must not fight it with words; it would be a propagation: we must kill it with deeds. And so, in the midst of the treatments that have the privilege of shaking the most vigorous spirits of our Sales, (1) there is one that we must never forget.
"The Papacy always exercised decisive action over the fate of Italy. With the arm, with the voice, with the pen, with the heart of its countless bishops, friars, nuns and faithful of all latitudes, the Papacy finds people everywhere ready to sacrifice to martyrdom, to enthusiasm. Wherever he wants to evoke it, he has friends who die and others who get undressed for his sake. It is an immense lever of which only some Popes have understood all the power. (And they still do not care they served only to a certain extent.) Today it is not a question of reconstituting this temporarily weakened power in our service: our final aim is that of Voltaire and the French Revolution: that is, the complete annihilation of Catholicism and even the Christian idea, which, if it remained standing above the ruins of Rome, would later perpetuate it. But to reach this goal more certainly and not to prepare for ourselves disillusionments that indefinitely prolong or compromise the good success of the cause, we must not listen to these French braggarts, to these nebulous Germans, to these melancholy Englishmen who believe they can kill Catholicism now with an obscene song, now with a sophism, now with a trivial sarcasm smuggled in like English cottons. Catholicism has a life that resists something else. He has seen more implacable and more terrible opponents; and the evil taste of blessing the grave of the angriest of them with his holy water has often been taken. So let our brothers in those countries let off steam with their intemperances of anti-Catholic zeal: let them make fun of our Madonnas and our apparent devotion. With this passport (of hypocrisy), we can conspire with all our convenience and gradually reach our goal.
"Therefore the Papacy has been inherent to our Italy for seventeen hundred years. Italy cannot breathe, nor move without the permission of the Supreme Shepherd. With him, she has the hundred arms of Briareo; without him, she is condemned to a compassionate impotence, to divisions, to hatreds, to hostility from the first chain of the Alps to the last ring of the Apennines. We cannot want such a state of affairs: we must seek a remedy for this situation. Well, the remedy is found. Pope, whoever he is, will never come to secret societies; it is up to secret societies to take the first step towards the Church and the Pope, with the aim of overcoming them both.
"The work to which we are preparing is not the work of a day, nor of a month, nor of a year. It can last many years, perhaps a century: but in our ranks the soldier dies and the war continues.
Alexander VI with all his private vices would not suit us, since he never erred in religious matters. A Clement XIV, on the other hand, would be our case from head to toe. Borgia was a libertine, a true sensual of the eighteenth century misled in the fifteenth century. Despite his vices, he was excommunicated from philosophy and disbelief because of the vigor with which he defended the Church. Ganganelli, on the other hand, stood with his hands and feet tied in the arms of the Bourbon ministers who frightened him, and the unbelievers who praised his tolerance, and for this reason Ganganelli became a great Pope. In our present conditions we would need such a Pope, if it were possible. With this only we will more certainly go to assault of the Church, which does not take pamphlets from our brothers in France, and with the gold of England. And do you want to know why? Because, with this alone, to instruct the rock on which God built his Church, we no longer need Hannibal's vinegar, cannon powder, or even our arms. We have the little finger of the successor of Peter engaged in the plot, and this little finger applies to this crusade all Urbani II and all S. Bernardi of Christianity.
"We do not doubt the point of reaching this supreme end of our efforts. But when? And how? The unknown is not yet seen. Nevertheless, since nothing has to move us from the plan outlined, which on the contrary everything must contribute to it, as if success were to crown the work just sketched out tomorrow, in this instruction, which we must keep hidden from the simple initiates, we want to give the Supreme Sales officers some advice which they should inculcate to all the brothers in the form of teaching or memorandum. It is above all important, not that required by the most basic discretion, that you never let anyone know that these tips are orders issued by the Sale. The clergy is too directly involved in it; nor is it lawful for these moonlights to joke with him as we do with these rulers or princes who blow themselves away.
a Rivarola? Immediately envelop it in all the networks you can. Make him a reputation that frightens boys and women: paint him cruel and bloodthirsty: tell about some heinous little boy who easily impresses himself in the minds of the people. When the foreign newspapers then learn from us these facts that they will know how to beautify and color in turn, for the respect that is due to the truth, show, or have some respectable imbecile show, rather the number of the newspaper where the names and facts of said characters. Like France and England, Italy will never fail in pens that can tell lies useful for the good cause. With a newspaper whose language you don't understand, but in which he will see the name of his delegate or his judge, the people will not need any more proof. The people here among us are in the infancy of Liberalism. He now believes in the Liberals, as he will later believe we don't know what else.
"Crush the enemy whatever he is, when he is powerful, by means of slander; but above all, crush him when he is still in the egg. To youth we must aim: we must seduce young people: it is necessary that we attract youth without notice of it, under the banner of secret societies. In order to advance, with counted but sure steps, in this dangerous way, two things are absolutely necessary for you. You must have the air of being as simple as doves, but together you must be as prudent as snakes. Your parents, your children, your own wives will always have to ignore the secret you carry in your bosom. And if you like it, to better deceive the scrutinizing eyes, to go to confession often, you are authorized to maintain, even with the confessor, the most absolute silence on these matters. You well know that the least revelation, that the smallest hint that escaped you in the Tribunal of penance or elsewhere can lead us to great calamities; and that the voluntary or involuntary revelator signs, with this same, his death sentence.
"Now, therefore, to secure a Pope according to our heart, it is first of all a question of forming, to this Pope, a generation worthy of the kingdom we desire. Leave the old and the mature men aside; go, instead, straight to youth, and, if possible, to childhood too. Never talk to young people about obscene and wicked things. Maxima debetur puero reverentia [Google translate: The greatest respect is owed to the boy]. Never forget these words of the poet, since they will serve you to safeguard against any license, from which it is absolutely necessary to abstain in the interest of the cause. To make our cause flourish and bear fruit in families, to have the right of asylum and hospitality at the home, you must present yourself with all the appearances of serious and moral men. Once your reputation is established in colleges, gymnasiums, universities and seminars, once you have won the trust of teachers and young people, make sure that especially those who enter the clerical militia seek your conversation. Nude their spirit of the ancient splendor of papal Rome. There is always a desire for the republican form in the heart of every Italian. Deftly confuse these two memories: excited, warm these so flammable natures to the idea of patriotic pride. Begin by offering them, but always in secret, innocent books, warm poems of national emphasis: gradually you will lead your disciples to the desired degree of fermentation. When on all points of the ecclesiastical state this everyday work has spread our ideas like light, then you will be able to realize how wise the council is, of which we now take the initiative.
"The events, which, in our opinion, rush too much, (2) will necessarily call, in a few months, an armed intervention by Austria. There are madmen who amuse themselves by cheerfully throwing others into the midst of dangers: but in the meantime these madmen, at a given moment, also drag the wise men with them. The revolution that is preparing in Italy will only produce misfortunes and proscriptions. Nothing is ripe: neither men, nor things: and nothing will be ripe for a long time yet. But with these future misfortunes, you will be able to easily vibrate a new rope in the heart of the young clergy. This rope will be the hatred of the foreigner. Let the German become ridiculous and hateful even before his expected intervention. With the idea of papal supremacy you always mix the memory of the wars of the Priesthood and the Empire. Raise the ill-rested passions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines: and so, little by little, you will make, with little expense, a reputation as a good Catholic and a good patriot.
"This reputation as a good Catholic and a good patriot will open the hearts of the young clergy and convents to our doctrines. In a few years this young clergy will have, by force of things, invaded all offices. He will govern, administer, judge, will form the council of the sovereign, and will be called to elect the future Pope. This Pope, like most of his contemporaries, will necessarily be more or less imbued, too, with the Italian and humanitarian principles that we are now beginning to put into circulation. It is a small mustard seed which we confide in the earth, but the sun of righteousness will develop it to the highest power, and you will one day see what rich crops this little seed will produce.
"In the way that we trace to our brothers, there are great obstacles to overcome, and difficulties of various kinds to overcome. It will triumph with experience and sagacity. The goal is so beautiful that it is worth the effort to explain all the sails to the wind. Do you want to revolutionize Italy? Look for the Pope whose portrait we have made. Do you want to establish the kingdom of the elect on the throne of the prostitute of Babylon? Let the Clergy walk under your banner, believing you are walking under the flag of the Apostolic Keys. Do you want to make the last vestige of tyrants and oppressors disappear? Stretch your nets like Simone Barjona: stretch them to the bottom of the sacristies, of the seminaries and convents, rather than at the bottom of the sea; and if you do not precipitate anything, we promise you a more miraculous catch than his. The fish fisherman became a fisherman of men: you will fish for friends and lead them to the feet of the Apostolic Chair. You will have thus fished a revolution in tiara and cape, preceded by the cross and the banner; a revolution that will need little help to set fire to the four corners of the world.
"Every act of our life therefore tends to discover this philosopher's stone. The alchemists of the Middle Ages wasted time and money in the search for this dream. The dream of secret societies will be fulfilled for this very simple reason that it is founded on the passions of man. Let us not be discouraged, therefore, either for a failure, or for a backhand, or for a defeat: we prepare our weapons in the silence of the Sales: we aim all our batteries, we blow in all passions, in the worst as in the most generous: and all there it leads us to believe that this plan will one day succeed, even beyond our most improbable calculations".
III. Fragment of a letter that bears only one team for signature, but which, compared with other writings of the same hand, seems to emanate from the Steering Committee and have a special authority. It is dated 20 October 1821.
It is necessary to make the name of the foreigner so unpopular that, when Rome will be seriously besieged by the Revolution, foreign aid is from the beginning an affront, even for the faithful of the country. We can no longer go against the enemy with the audacity of our fathers of 1793. We are hindered by laws and even more by customs: but, over time, we may perhaps be able to achieve the goal which went to them failed. Our fathers were all too hasty and lost the game. We will gain it if, by curbing temerity, we come to strengthen weaknesses, audacity of our fathers of 1793.
"From failure to failure we reach victory. So have your eye always open on what is happening in Rome. Make the pre-cut unpopular in every way; do in the center of catholicity what we all, individually or in body, do in the wings. Shake, throw on the street, with or without reasons, it doesn't matter, but shake. All the elements of success are enclosed in these words. The best-conceived conspiracy is the one that gets more agitated and that compromises more people. There are martyrs, there are victims, we will always find those who will be able to give the necessary colors to this".
IV. Letter from the Jew known as the Little Tiger. It gives instructions to the members of the Piedmontese Sale that Piccolo Tigre had formed in Turin, on the means to be taken to recruit fragassoni. It bears the date of January 18, 1822.
Better yet, have others, associations or companies of commerce, industry, music, and fine arts found. Gather these tribes of yours still ignorant in this or that place, even in the sacristies or chapels; put them under the direction of a virtuous, esteemed, but credulous and easy-to-be-deceived priest; infiltrate the poison into the chosen hearts; infiltrate it in small doses and as if by chance: then reflecting on it, you will be amazed yourself of your success.
This is only a preparation for the great work that you must begin. When you have managed to insinuate someone's disgust of family and religion (two things that always get along), pass on certain words that excite the desire to be affiliated with the nearest lodge. This vanity of the citizen or of the bourgeois to be infidel to freemasonry is such a trivial and universal thing that I am always understood with admiration in the face of human stupidity. I am amazed not to see the whole human race knocking on the door of the Venerables, and to ask these gentlemen the honor of being one of the workers elected to rebuild the Temple of Solomon. The prestige of the unknown exerts such power on men that people prepare, trembling.
"Being a member of a lodge, feeling called, without your wife or children knowing anything about it, to keep a secret that you never trust, is for some natures a voluptuousness and an ambition. The loggias are now capable of educating gluttons, but never citizens. We have lunch too at T. . . C. . . and T. . . A. . . F. .. (dearest and most respectable Brothers) of all the Orient; but it is a kind of deposit, a herd, a center for which we must pass before reaching us. The loggias do nothing but relative evil, an evil tempered by a false philanthropy and by even more false songs as happens in France. This is too archaic and gastronomic, but together it has a purpose that must always be encouraged. By teaching a brother to carry the weapon with his glass we thus take possession of his will, his intelligence and his freedom. You have it, you turn it over and over, you study it. Their inclinations, affections and tendencies are discovered; when he is mature for us, he directs him to the Secret Society, of which freemasonry can no longer be anything but a dark antechamber.
There are many in this case. Make them fragassoni. The loggia will make them carbonari. May be one day the High Sale will deign to affiliate them. Meanwhile they will serve as mistletoe for the imbeciles, the intriguing, the bourgeois and the spianati. These poor principles will do our business, believing we are doing our own. They will serve as a sign for the shop; there is never a shortage of madmen willing to compromise in a conspiracy, of which any prince is believed to be the arch of support, believing to make their own.
"Once a man, even a prince, or rather especially if he is a prince, begins to become corrupt, persuade himself that he will not stop on the slope. Little morality is found even in the most moral people, and one walks very quickly in this path of progress. Therefore be afraid if you see the flourishing loggias, while Carbonarism is hardly recruited.
At the passage, grab the first lamb that will offer you in the desired conditions. The bourgeois has good things, the prince even more. But, however, [make sure] that none of these lambs are to be eaten by fox, like the infamous Carignano. The betrayal of the sworn secret is a death sentence, and all these principles, weak or cowardly, ambitious or repentant, betray us and denounce us. Fortunately, they knew little or nothing, and they cannot put themselves on the trail of our true mysteries.
It is the permanent revolution; it is the forced overthrow of thrones and dynasties. Now an ambitious man cannot want these things. We aim higher and further away: therefore we try to look at each other and consolidate ourselves. We conspire only against Rome; therefore, let us make use of all accidents, take advantage of all eventualities; we mainly distrust an exaggerated zeal. A good, cold, calculated, profound hatred is better than all these fireworks, and all these grandstand declamations. In Paris they don't want to understand these things; but in London, I met men who grasped our plan better and associated themselves with more fruit. Considerable offerings were made. We will soon have a printing house in Malta at our disposal. We can therefore, with impunity, [go forth] without fail,
V. Letter from Nubius, head of the High Sale, to Volpe on April 3, 1824.
Dear Fox,
But intelligent ears could very well guess everything. It is the need to inspire fear or jealousy of some neighbor or friend that leads one of our brothers to such guilty indiscretions. The success of our work depends on the deepest mystery, and in the Sales we must find the initiate, like the Christian of the Imitation, always ready to love computer nesciri and pro nihilo [ignored and stead of nothing]. I don't speak for you, dear Fox; I'm sure you don't need this advice. You must, like me, know the value of discretion and self-forgetfulness in the presence of the great interests of humanity; but even if, in the examination of conscience, you find yourself in contravention, please think carefully; for indiscretion is the mother of treason.
"You had a certain part of the clergy who bites the hook of our doctrines with a wonderful liveliness: it is the priest who will never have any other job than to say Mass, another relief than to wait in the coffee for two hours after Ave Maria to go to bed. This priest, the greatest idler of all, the idle who clutter the Eternal City, seems to me created to be the tool of secret societies. He is poor, ardent, unemployed, ambitious; he knows himself disinherited of the goods of this world; he believes himself too far from the sun of protection to be able to warm his limbs, and is therefore always muttering against the unjust distribution of the honors and goods of the Church. We begin to use these deaf moods that the native carelessness scarcely dared to confess to herself. To this ingredient of the states priests, without employment and certainly character that a ragged cloak like their hat that has lost all traces of its primitive form, we are adding, as far as possible, a mixture of Corsican and Genoese priests who arrive in Rome with the tiara in their suitcase. After Napoleon was born on their island, there is not one of these Corsicans who do not believe themselves to be a papal Bonaparte. This ambition, which is now vulgar, has been favorable to us. It has opened up ways that would probably have been unknown to us for a long time. It serves us to consolidate, to illuminate the way we take, and their complaints, enriched with all the comments and all the curses, offer us points of support which we would never have thought of.
"The earth ferments, the germ develops, but the harvest is still far away".
VI. Letter from Nubius to Vindice after the execution of Targhini and Montanari, November 23, 1825. (3)
"Dear Vindice,
Nor reconciliation with Heaven. Up to now, the patients, placed in the chapel, wept with repentance to touch the heart of the Vicar of mercies; they have wanted nothing to do with heavenly happiness, and their reprobate death has produced a magical effect on the masses. This was the first proclamation of secret societies and a taking over of souls.
He worked to confess to him all his tenacity as a priest, and he was won. I owe myself, my name, my position, and above all to our future, to deplore together with all Catholic hearts this unprecedented scandal in Rome. I will deplore it so eloquently that I hope to soften Piatti himself. And speaking of flowers, we asked one of our most innocent affiliates of the Freemasonry, the poet Casimiro Delavigne, a Messenian (ode) above Targhini and Montanari. This poet whom I often see in the world of the arts and the Salons (conversations) is a good man: he has therefore promised to cry as a tribute to the martyrs and to electrocute an anathema against the executioners. The executioners will be the Pope and the priests. It will always be the same as earned. The correspondents of the English newspapers will also do wonders, and I know more than one who has the epic trumpet in his mouth for the honor of the thing.
"Yet it is a very bad work to do heroes and martyrs like this. The crowd is so emotional in front of that knife that truncates life; it passes so quickly from one emotion to another; it starts to admire those so early who boldly face that supreme moment, which after this show I feel all upside down and ready to act like the crowd. This impression, from which I cannot free myself and which made the two executed so soon forgive their crime and their final impenitence, it led me to certain philosophical, medical and not very Christian reflections, which we will perhaps have to use one day.
The man who goes on stage is no longer dangerous. But if he goes up to it firmly and looks at death with an impassive, though guilty, forehead, he will have the favor of the multitudes.
If the Caesars had employed the Locusts of their time in this trade, I am persuaded that our old Olympic Jupiter and all his small second-order gods would not have succumbed so miserably. The fate of Christianity would certainly not have been so beautiful. His apostles, his priests, his virgins were called to die torn by lions in the amphitheater or on public squares under the gaze of an attentive people. His apostles, his priests, his virgins, moved by a feeling of faith, imitation, proselytism or enthusiasm, died without turning pale, and singing hymns of victory. There was something to arouse the desire to die like this; and they have seen such whims. Didn't gladiators generate gladiators? If those poor Caesars had the honor of being part of the High Sale, I would have simply told them to take the most daring of these neophytes a drink according to the recipe, and we would no longer have talked about other conversions, because we didn't martyrs would be found more. In fact, there are no longer any emulators, neither by copy nor by attraction, when a body without movement is dragged onto the scaffold, an inert will and eyes that cry without moving. Christians were immediately popular because the people love everything that strikes. If he had seen weaknesses, fears, and a trembling and feverish mass, he would have whistled and Christianity would have ended in the third act of the tragicomedy.
"If I think I have to propose such a means (of poisons) it is on the principle of political humanity. If Targhini and Montanari had been condemned to die as cowards, if they had been a little helped to carry out this sentence with some pharmacy ingredients, Targhini and Montanari they would now be two miserable killers who were unable even to look death in the face. The people would despise them. Instead, he admires, in spite of himself, this death in which brazenness played its part, but where the papal government did the I would like it to be decided in an emergency that we would not do this. Never let death on the gallows be glorious, holy, courageous and happy; and you will rarely need to kill.
"The French Revolution, which has had so much good, has deceived itself on this point. Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and most of the victims of that era are sublime in resignation and greatness of mind. They will always remember (and my old grandmother made me cry several times by telling me) those ladies who paraded in front of the princess Elizabeth at the foot of the guillotine, made her their profound reverence, as at the court circle in Versailles; this is not what we need. given the occasion, let a Pope and two or three Cardinals die like old women, with all the agony of agony, and in the terror of death, and you paralyze the desire for imitation. You save the bodies, but kill the spirit.
Revolutionary humanity is what inspired us such a precaution. I recommend you to memento".
VII. Felice's letter, written by Ancona on 11 June 1829 after the publication of the Encyclical of Pius VIII on 24 May 1829. The High Sale in reading it was believed to be betrayed. (4)
We are not used to hearing the Pope express himself with this resolution. This language is not in the style of the apostolic palaces: if it was used in this solemn circumstance, it must be said that Pius VIII obtained some proof of our conspiracy. It is up to those in Rome to watch over everyone's safety more than ever; but in the presence of such an explicit declaration of war, I would like it to be deemed appropriate to lay down arms for a moment.
The multitude has always had a great propensity for counter truths. Ingannatela; she loves to be deceived; but, mind you, no precipitation, and above all no recourse to arms. Our friend of Osimo who has tested the ground says that we must go bravely to make our Easter and thus to sleep the vigilance of the authority.
"Assuming that the Court of Rome has not entered into any suspicion of our trade, do you believe that the attitude of these frenzied carbonari cannot, at any moment, put it on our trail? We are playing with fire and we must not end up burning ourselves. If, by dint of assassinations and liberal strikes, the Carbonari throw a new enterprise on the arms of Italy, do we not fear being compromised? To give our project the full extent it must have, we have to work slowly, quietly, gradually gain ground and never lose a hand. The lightning flashed from the top of the Vatican Loggia may presage a hurricane. Are we in case we can avoid it? And will this storm not delay the harvest of our harvest? The carbonari are stirred with a thousand sterile vows; every day they are prophesying a universal turmoil. This will be our undoing; for then the parties will be more severely separated, and it will be necessary to opt for one or the other. From this choice a crisis will inevitably arise, and from this crisis an update or an unexpected disaster".
VIII. Letter from Nubius to Vindice after the insurrections of February 1831 and January 1832.
Only in a few months will there be anything useful. We will use the real tears of their families and the alleged pains of the exile to make us a popular weapon of the amnesty. We will always ask for it, happy to get it as late as possible, but we will ask for it out loud.
"Our eight years of internal work had produced happy fruits. From those experienced people that we are, we began to feel that the air did not circulate so freely around the Church. My ear, always attentive, like that of a hunting dog, he collected with certain voluptuousness of the soul sighs, certain involuntary confessions that escaped from the mouth of certain influential members of the clerical family. in spite of the excommunication bubbles and encyclicals, they were with us from the heart, if not in body. the Memorandum it would have accomplished the work in carrying out its English and natural consequences. (7) Certain symptoms of all kinds, the severity of which was rather in substance than in form, showed themselves in the air like certain dark clouds preceding a storm. Well, all these successes, prepared by hand, find themselves compromised by miserable expeditions that end even more regrettably than they had not started. The little Mamiani, with his poems and his operettas, Pietro Ferretti, with his bad business that he wants to hide, Orioli, with his cheated science, all our madmen in Bologna, with their bellicose instinct calmed down at the first cannon shot, turn away for ten years at least the priest with us. The priest is told that war is waged on the Church, to the Pope, the Sacred College, the Prelature etc. Now the priest, who, as a priest, considers all these goods, all these honors as his patrimony, the priest begins to reflect. Liberalism presents itself to him under the aspect of an implacable enemy, and the priest declares a war to death to Liberalism. And so you see what has come. It would seem that Cardinal Bernetti has the intuition of our plans, since the orders issued by him, and which are communicated to me instantly, all lead to the delivery of the friars and parish priests to put themselves at the head of the populations and lead them to combat against the rebels. Friars and priests all obey: and the people willingly follow them, raising cries of revenge. A bishop did even better. Armed with two pistols on his belt, he marched against the insurgents, with the danger of killing his brother in the fray. I really like this similarity of Cain and Abel. From the point of view of family hatreds, this idea is good; but it is very harmful to our plans.
"The French seem born out of our misfortune. Or they betray us or compromise us. When will we be able to take back, with a head rested, the work for which we had assembled so many successful elements?"
IX. Malegari letter from London to Dr. Breidenstein in 1835.
"We form an association of brothers above all points of the globe; we have common aspirations and interests; we all tend towards the emancipation of humanity; we want to break every kind of yoke, and there is one that we don't see, that we hardly feel and that gravitates on us. Whence it comes? where it is? Nobody knows, at least nobody says it. The association is secret, even for us, veterans of the secret associations. We ask for things that, sometimes, they have their hair straightened on their heads; and would you believe it? they send me from Rome that two of our men, very well known for their hatred of fanaticism, were obliged, by order of the supreme chief, to kneel and communicate on the last Easter. But I would like to know where similar cappuccinos will lead us".
X. Letter from Nubius to Beppo, dated April 7, 1836.
Mazzini is a demigod for the foolish, before whom he tries to be proclaimed the pontiff of the fraternity, of which he will be the Italian god. In the sphere in which he acts, this poor Joseph is ridiculous; for him to be a complete ferocious beast, he will always miss his claws.
"He is the bourgeois gentleman of the secret societies that my dear Molière did not have the ability to glimpse. Let him take him to the taverns of Lake Geneva, or hide his importance and his real emptiness in the brothels of London. Let him perish or write, at ease with the old insurrection leftovers, or with his general Ramorino of the young Italy, the young Allemagne, the young Francie, the young Polonia, the young Swiss, etc. If this can serve as food for his insatiable pride, we do not object; but make him understand, even if using the terms that will seem more convenient to you, that the association of which he speaks no longer exists, even that it never existed; that you do not know it, and that although you must declare to it that if it existed, it would certainly have taken the least appropriate way to enter it. Granted the case of its existence, this Sale is evidently above all the others; it is the S. Giovanni in Laterano, caput et mater omnium ecclesiarum [Google translate: St. John Lateran, the head and the mother of all churches]. The elect are called to him, who alone are recognized as worthy of being introduced to him. Up to this day, Mazzini would have been excluded: does he not think that by putting himself in the middle, by force or by cunning, in a secret that does not belong to him, does he perhaps expose himself to dangers that he has already incurred more than once?
"Accostinate this last thought in your way; but send it to the high priest of the dagger, and I, who know his consummate prudence, make a pledge that this thought will produce its effect on the infringing".
XI. Letter of Vindice, written by Castellamare, to Nubius, on August 9, 1838. He carries out the theory of high sale.
What does it matter to the world about an unknown corpse, lying on the public road, by the revenge of the secret societies? What does it matter to the people that the blood of a worker, an artist, a gentleman, or even a prince was shed by virtue of a sentence from Mazzini, or any of his assassins who is seriously enjoying Sainte-Vehme? (8) The world does not even have time to look after the victim's last moans: he passes and forgets. We, dear Nubio, we alone are the ones who can suspend his march. Catholicism, even less than the Monarchy, does not fear the tip of a style; but these two bases of social order can fall under the weight of corruption. So let us never tire of corrupting. Tertullian rightly said that the blood of martyrs was the seed of Christians. Now it is decided in our councils that we no longer want Christians: therefore we do not make martyrs; but we popularize vice in multitudes. Let them breathe it with the five senses, drink it, saturate it; and this land, where Aretino sowed, is always willing to receive obscene and lecherous teachings. Make vicious hearts, and you will no longer have Catholics. Remove the priest from work, from the altar, and from virtue: rightly try to occupy his thoughts and his time elsewhere. Make him idle, gluttonous, and patriotic, he will become ambitious, intriguing and perverse. In this way, you will have fulfilled your task much better than if you had broken the point of your dagger in the bones of some poor poor man. I do not want, as for me, and I believe that you too, O Nubio, do not want to become a vulgar conspirator, and thus spend your life in the old way of conspiracies.
"We have undertaken corruption on a large scale, the corruption of the people by means of the clergy, and of the clergy by our means, the corruption that must lead us to the burial of the Church. One of our friends, days ago, was laughing philosophically at our plans and saying: "To break down Catholicism, we must first suppress the woman." This phrase is true in one sense, but since we cannot suppress the woman, let's bribe her together with the Church. Corruptio optimi pessima [Google translate: The corruption of the best is the worst]. The purpose is very nice to tempt men like us; let's depart to run after some miserable satisfaction of personal revenge. The best dagger to assassinate the Church and hit her in the heart, is corruption. So work to the end!"