About book Prisoner Of The Vatican: The Popes, The Kings, And Garibaldi's Rebels In The Struggle To Rule Modern Italy (2006)
First, let me say that unless you are totally enthralled by history (like I am!), you may not want to read this. This is not an historical novel, it is not a folksy history; it is definitely an intense historical look at the papal reigns of Pius IX and Leo XIII as well as the unification of Italy. So don't go into the book looking for a novel -- this isn't it! Having said that, if you DO like a very well-written history, then you will enjoy this one. I liked it so much I bought two other books by this author which I plan to get to before the month is over.The author, David I. Kertzer, knows his stuff. He used a very wide range of original documents and did an enormous amount of research in preparation for this book, which is very obvious. It did take me about 3 days to finish, which is somewhat slow for me, but it was well worth all the time it took. I had my laptop with me while I read to quickly do some online encyclopedia work while I read through this book; I had no clue about Italy's history & especially not about the subject of this book.Basic synopsis:While Pius IX was the pope, Italy, which was not a fully unified nation at the time, unified. Land that was formerly ruled by the Pope called the Papal States was incorporated into Italy, including Rome. As if this wasn't bad enough, as the Franco-Prussian war erupted in 1870, the Pope's protectors, the French troops of French Emperor Napoleon III, had to return home to help in the war. The Italian government offered the Pope the Leonine City in Rome, but Pius thought that if he accepted the King's offer, this would have implied some sort of endorsement of the legitimacy of the Kingdom's rule over his former domain. The pope refused; Italy declared war and On September 20, the Italian army entered Rome and annexed it to the Kingdom of Italy. Pope Pius IX declared himself a "prisoner of the Vatican," although technically, he was free to move around or whatever. To add insult to injury, the King, Victor Emanuel II, moved his seat of government to Rome, to the Quirinal Palace. The rest of the story deals with the politics of Leo XIII, who became the pope after Pius IX. The politics of the conclave are fascinating; all connected to European politics and machinations behind the scenes at the time. As Leo took papal office, many hoped for a change from the previous policies of Pius IX, but along with his choice of secretary of state Mariano Rampolla, the papal politics got even more intense: Leo XIII (under the guidance of Rampolla) threatened to go into exile so that foreign governments might aid him in winning back the former Papal States, by pressuring the Catholics throughout Europe to force their governments to go to war gainst Italy. But the problem was that this was a really volatile time among the great powers. It wasn't until 1929 and the Lateran Pacts between the Pope at the time and Mussolini, that any talk of trying to regain the Papal States was dropped. Absolutely fascinating account; I learned so much from this one book that now I'm eager to branch out and learn more. Definitely recommended for history readers.read: 06/01/2005
When Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuele, and the rest fashioned the state of Italy out of an assortment of kingdoms and duchies on the peninsula, the Papal States (ruled by the Catholic Church) were among the annexed territories. For the next several decades, the Pope schemed and intrigued against the newly united Kingdom of Italy to regain his lost "temporal" power. His most potent weapon was his oft-repeated threat to exile himself from Rome, with the intent of soon returning at the head of a victorious foreign army. This book tells the story of the Pope's efforts, in often excruciating detail. Kertzer sticks to his copious historical documents, rarely intruding on the story with much analysis or context, both of which I would have appreciated a bit more of. His final thesis is presented only in a few short pages of Epilogue. Perhaps if the Pope had actually managed to carry off one of these dastardly plots (rather than just endlessly vacillating about them), Kertzer's story would have been improved. This book seemed a lot longer than 300 pages, but if you have an absolute fascination with the Papacy, Italian unification, or Rome, you might find it worth the slog.
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This is one of those books that made me think "how on Earth could I have not known anything about this?" The book is not served well by the title which makes one think of a cheesy conspiracy novel (the subtitle on my copy is "the Popes' Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State."). I found this fascinating. There are two main (lots of others) groups of protagonists--The Pope/the "intransigents"/and the Catholic clergy and laity and the Italian nationalists/anticlerics. Italian natio
—Lauren Albert
In some ways I'm the ideal reader of this book: I love Rome, have a bizarre fascination with Catholicism, and have an amateur interest in Italian history. But this just didn't do it for me. Frankly, it bored me to tears. It's basically just a blow-by-blow diplomatic history of the Vatican in the late 19th century. But nothing ever happens. There's no "secret plot to capture Rome from the new Italian state." There's just constant dithering over whether the pope should abandon Rome for another Catholic country. Which, of course, he never did.I can't help but think that Kertzer thought he would find something more interesting, found nothing, but was left with lots of information and decided to make a book of it.A real shame, since I loved Kertzer's books on the Mortara affair and papal antisemitism.
—Danny
