Over four out of the seven and a half years of Benedict’s pontificate lay under the shadow of the First World War. It is inevitable, therefore, that much of the most recent literature on the pontificate is concerned with Benedict and the war, and with the controversies surrounding his diplomacy during the course of it, in particular the most well known of all his acts, the ‘Peace Note’ of August 1917. Much of the rest of his reign also lay under the shadow of peacemaking and its unsatisfactory results, at least as far as Benedict was concerned. In order to understand the development of the Pope’s peace diplomacy, it is first necessary to understand the broad lines of policy which Benedict and Gasparri followed from the start, and the impact on the Vatican of Italy’s entry into the war in May 1915, which had a powerful conditioning influence on decision-making in the Vatican thereafter. Initially, at least, the policy of Benedict and Gasparri did not appear to differ very much from that of Pius X and Merry Del Val. Almost immediately after his election, the new Pope made his first pronouncement on the war. Benedict’s public statement of 8 September 1914 repeated his predecessor’s call for prayers to end the war, and included an appeal to the powers for peace.1 Though the statement lacked neither force nor urgency, there was still a feeling in the Vatican, as elsewhere, that the war would be over by Christmas. But by 1 November, when Benedict published his first encyclical, Ad Beatissimi, no such illusion could be maintained. The battle of the Marne in early to mid-September brought the stalemate of trench warfare in the west; the Western Front was effectively established by the end of that month and the battle of Ypres a month later confirmed it. And the stalemate would last for another four years. The military situation on the Eastern Front, between Germany and Austria-Hungary on the one hand and Russia on the other, while more fluid was no less undecided. Turkey’s junction with the Central Powers and declaration of war on its Slav neighbour at the beginning of October made a victory on the part of the ‘Russian steamroller’ even less likely thereafter.
In Ad Beatissimi, Benedict addressed himself to the causes of the war, as well as to its consequences. According to his analysis, the causes of the international conflict had their origins in the ills afflicting the whole of human society. He castigated the current ‘contempt for authority, the injustice in the relations between classes and the attainment of material goods made into the sole object of human activity and the unrestrained striving after independence’, which can be interpreted as a broad attack on liberal individualism in general, and took a swipe at the forces of secularization and anticlericalism at work in human society: ‘[One wonders] whether it is wise and sensible for public authorities and States to divorce themselves from the holy religion of Christ … or whether it is a wise policy to ban from the public schools the teaching of the Gospel and of the Church.’2 In a paragraph with the interesting title of ‘The Classes and the Masses’, he condemned ‘class hatred’ and, in particular, frequent strikes, without, however, reiterating Leo XIII’s criticisms of the capitalist system against which the strikes were directed.3 In his analysis of the specific causes of the war, he drew attention to the ‘absence in relations between men of mutual love with their fellow men’ and declared ‘Race hatred has reached its climax.’4 In Benedict’s vocabulary, ‘race’ was often synonymous with nationalism. Once again condemning the horrors of the war in no uncertain terms, he urged its solution by declaring, ‘Surely there are other ways and means whereby violated rights can be rectified?’, but as yet, he offered no clear, practical answer to his own rhetorical question.5 Presumably, he was still hoping that the warring powers, with his encouragement, would be able to resolve their differences on their own.
Ad Beatissimi was to be the first of many attempts on Benedict’s part to bring about an end to the war. In allocutions and encyclicals, in other public statements, and above all in careful, patient, secret negotiations, he and Gasparri repeatedly sought first to prevent the war from spreading, as in the months leading up to both the entry of Italy into the conflict in May 1915 and that of the USA in April 1917, and then to bring the two sides to the negotiating table. It is the sheer, dogged persistence of their efforts that is so impressive, as is their work to provide humanitarian aid to both military and civilian victims of the conflict on both sides. As the Vicar of ‘the Prince of Peace’, Benedict believed it to be his duty to do no less, and in pursuit of those aims, he and Gasparri sought to preserve a stance of impartiality for the Vatican which the latter justified on the grounds of the ‘paternal-universal character of the Pope and the supreme interest of the Church’.6
While virtually no biographer or historian doubts the underlying benevolence, pacifism and humanitarianism of Benedict’s motives, some, like many contemporary observers, have challenged the impartiality of Vatican diplomacy during the course of the conflict, and its disinterestedness. The Serbo-American historian Dragan Zivojinovic, for example, has argued that, ‘Although the Vatican pretended to be impartial and neutral, there is now evidence that its sympathies lay with the Central Powers, particularly Austria-Hungary.’7 These are serious allegations, especially the first, because Benedict always stressed his impartiality towards the belligerent powers: such was his anxiety to appear above the conflict that he even refused to look at a film of the war sent by the British.8 But we know that from the beginning of the conflict the Vatican was accused of being sympathetic towards the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, to the point that Benedict was regularly described as the Pape boche in the French press. But this criticism came not only from hostile, anticlerical quarters. Cardinal Aidan Gasquet, Britain’s only curial cardinal in 1914, was appalled by the pro-German atmosphere which he found in the Roman Curia, and among Italian Catholic clergy and laity in general. In November 1914, in a letter to British Foreign Secretary Lord Grey about the imminent arrival of a British mission to the Vatican, in whose genesis he himself had played an important part, he wrote:
The Pope and his Secretary have been quite correct in their attitude, but the mentality of the clergy generally is astounding … Germany and Austria and Bavaria have been at work for the past two years and more and when the War started they had the ground well-prepared. Prussia does not leave things to chance and had a good deal of wisdom of the serpent.9
Even allowing for Gasquet’s patriotic passion, his interpretation of the situation is broadly supported by others. Matthias Erzberger, an influential German Catholic politician, confirmed the strength of the German lobby’ in the Vatican in a report on his visit to Rome in the spring of 1915, when he sought to persuade Italian politicians from going to war against Austria.10 Alberto Monticone, the Catholic historian of Italy in the First World War, provides a very clear and plausible explanation of the situation which Gasquet so strongly deplored, and which led to repeated accusations of partiality for the Central Powers on the Vatican’s behalf. He argues that, on the one hand, there were strong German influences, political and cultural, in the Vatican due to ‘the gamut of German research projects, publications and conferences in Rome on theological, ecclesiological and spiritual topics’, whereas, ‘there was on the other hand a crisis in the relationship with French culture’, due, no doubt, to the Modernist leanings of so many French Catholic intellectuals: he also points to the influence of the Germans in the Jesuit headquarters in Rome, especially Lede-chowski.11 And in a certain sense, the predominance of German/Austro-Hungarian influences in the Vatican merely reflected the broader hegemony of those influences in Italy, as a result of that country’s thirty-year adherence to the Triple Alliance.
This situation was not helped by the relatively poor relations between the Entente Powers and the Vatican. Whereas the Central Powers had three diplomatic representatives at the papal court, in addition to the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, and Germany was represented by two envoys, one for Prussia and one for Bavaria, the Entente could count on only two, the Russian and Belgian envoys. The former had little influence due to the tensions in the Holy See’s relations with Orthodox Russia, as a result of which no nuncio was permitted in St Petersburg, and the Belgian ambassador had little clout either. Indeed, contemporary commentators were unanimous in describing the lack of sympathy with which the plight of Belgium (and Serbia) was greeted in the conclave of 1914.12 Even Gasparri had little time for Belgian claims of victimization, declaring that the little kingdom should have given way to the German invasion.13 In part, the Entente Powers were to blame for this situation: Britain had withdrawn its unofficial representative in Rome four years after the final collapse of the Pope’s temporal power in 1870 (the USA had withdrawn its envoy in 1867), and France of course had ruptured relations with the Holy See in 1905.
Dragan Zivojinovic argues that Benedict was partial to the Central Powers because ‘he was elected with Austrian influence’ and because he was dependent on Erzberger, the German Centre Party leader, on account of his fund-raising activities on the Pope’s behalf: ‘This relieved the Pope’s situation but made him, and the Curia, dependent upon Germany and on occasion ready to voice views that reflected Germany’s desires and needs’.14 Zivojinovic’s allegations are based on evidence in the Erzberger papers which claims that the Vatican was almost bankrupt at the death of Pius X, and that his successor could hardly pay his staff,15 but as has already been demonstrated, Benedict in fact inherited a strong financial position at his election (Chapter 3). In any case, as Piffl’s diary demonstrates, Benedict was fortunate to have obtained the support of the Austro-Hungarian cardinals, though it also shows that their government was less than enthusiastic about him, and that Cardinal Hartmann’s voting reflected the German government’s distinct hostility to his candidature (p. 62). All this is hardly surprising as he was, after all, Rampolla’s protégé and committed to his policies towards Austria, Germany and France, but it emphatically does not prove that he was unduly sympathetic to the Central Powers after 1914. The essence of Rampolla’s strategy was that Germany, a Prussian, Protestant power, needed to be balanced by Catholic, cosmopolitan Austria. Again, while it is true that the inflow of monies from Peter’s Pence was disrupted due to the war, at a time when the Vatican was spending enormous sums on relief work, it is also the case that Benedict received increasingly large sums from the United States,16 but no one has suggested that he was in any way influenced in his policy towards that country as a result. Perhaps the last word should be left to J. D. Gregory, who on other matters was highly critical of Benedict, but said of him: ‘I am convinced that he is not either temperamentally or politically pro-German.’17
What is much more convincing about Zivojinovic’s interpretation of the general thrust of Vatican policies and sympathies during the First World War is his claim that Benedict and Gasparri were essentially committed to the preservation or restoration of the status quo: there is even a lot to be said for Zivojinovic’s argument that it was this obsession, in a rapidly changing international situation, which rendered nugatory many of Benedict’s peace efforts.18 Benedict was not a revolutionary Pope like John XXIII or even an innovatory one like Paul VI; most of his instincts were conservative, especially in foreign relations. It was essentially in the interests of the Holy See that the international status quo be preserved. They were also especially aware of the threat which the disruptive forces of socialism and anarchism posed to the social and political order. In particular, Benedict and Gasparri could not be indifferent to the fate of Austria-Hungary, the last Catholic great power and a bulwark against Russian Orthodoxy and Pan-slavism.19 The collapse of the Central Powers was no more desirable than the westward and southward march of a victorious Russia, which might end in the seizure of Istanbul/Constantinople and the erection of Santa Sophia into a sort of Orthodox St Peter’s: the commitments which Britain and France had given to Russia on the eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire were a constant source of anxiety in the Vatican. J. D. Gregory claimed that Benedict was obsessed with Russia.20 Sir Henry Howard explained why in a report to London:
The Vatican is filled with alarm and foreboding by the agreement made between H.M.’s Government and Russia, giving Russia possession of Santa Sophia, with an extraterritorial zone to which the (Russian) Holy Synod may be transferred – the erection of a rival establishment, as it were, to the Vatican on the shores of the Bosphorus. This can later lead, the Vatican believes, to the Orthodox Church extending its sway to the shore of the Adriatic.21
Gasparri confirmed these fears in a conversation with Carlo Monti: ‘the installation of the Russians in Constantinople would be a grave blow to the interests of Catholicism’, and for Monti’s benefit he added that it would undermine Italian influence in the East as well.22
The Vatican was not entirely neutral in its attitudes towards France and Britain either, because the former, or at least its government, was strongly masonic and anti-clerical, and the latter was Protestant. Though, as Vistalli has argued, the French and Belgians were both fundamentally Catholic peoples and the British Empire contained significant Catholic minorities,23 the Vatican had something to fear from their victory, but it also had a lot to fear from that of a Protestant, Prussian-dominated Germany dragging the Habsburg Empire in its wake. Even allowing for the unhappy plight of Catholics in Russia, the maintenance of the status quo ante suited the Vatican best. Though their views were to change as time passed and circumstances changed, at the beginning of the conflict Benedict and Gasparri sought an alteration of the international status quo as they understood it in only one key respect; they obviously desired a revision of what they saw as the very unsatisfactory relationship between the Holy See and Italy. This aim, and the broader one of seeking to restore the Holy See’s international influence and prestige, were powerful influences on the Vatican’s diplomatic activities between 1914 and 1920. While it is undeniably true that the underlying motive for the Vatican’s attempts to mediate between the belligerents was the desire to end what Benedict described in his Peace Note of August 1917 as the ‘useless slaughter’ of the war as quickly as possible, such efforts, would and did lead to what the Italian historian Italo Garzia describes as ‘a greater international presence’ for the Holy See.24 Under Benedict and Gasparri the Vatican was not, therefore, a totally disinterested observer during the First World War.
The outbreak of the First World War inevitably led to a rapid change in the international standing of the Holy See. Governments quickly grasped the potential moral importance of the Pope as a neutral, given the large numbers of Catholics on all sides. President Poincaré of France sent a carefully neutral but cordial reply to Benedict’s letter informing him of his election,25 and both Germany and Austria put aside initial reservations to woo the new pontiff.26 Even the usually sceptical and suspicious Italian government recognized the potentially enhanced international position of the Holy See by quickly establishing a permanent channel of communication with the newly elected pontiff through his friend Carlo Monti. Within three months of the outbreak of the war, the British Government also recognized the Pope’s new position, as well as the pernicious effects of the palpably strong influence of the Central Powers at the papal court, by sending an envoy to the Vatican. The French at first opposed this initiative,27 and then confirmed its wisdom by stationing an ‘unofficial’ envoy to the Vatican, M. Loiseau, in Rome.28 At the end of 1915, the Kingdom of the Netherlands also re-established relations with the Vatican, sending an envoy to the Pope in order to foster its plans for a peace conference to be held in The Hague.29 In 1915, a special, non-diplomatic papal delegation in Berne, the first since Switzerland had broken off relations in 1873, was established to supervise joint Swiss–Vatican humanitarian efforts. It was also useful in their attempts to bring about peace, since the Swiss capital was to be the scene of various peace initiatives (as well as being a spy centre) throughout the war.30 The British legation at the Holy See quickly grasped the significance of these developments; it realized that in collaboration with other members of the ‘league of neutrals’ – the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and perhaps even the United States – the Holy See was building the potential for a serious peace effort.31 The reaction of the Italian government was rather different and offers the strongest evidence that these developments constituted an enormous increase in the international standing of the Holy See, with the potential to upset the balance of power between the Vatican and Rome. Despite her own improved, albeit unofficial, relations with the Pope, Italy sought to dissuade all three powers from establishing relations with him.32
Recognition of its importance as a moral authority also had drawbacks for the Vatican; belligerents on both sides sought to appeal to this authority in pursuit of their own ‘moral’ agendas. The Entente Powers were especially anxious to elicit the moral condemnation of the Pope for the German violation of Belgian neutrality and also German atrocities in Belgium, most notably the sack of Louvain and the burning of its university library. Another major cause of complaint was the enforced labour, or even worse, deportations of civilian populations from northern France. The representatives of the Allied governments at the Vatican, not to mention the press in Britain, France and Belgium, repeatedly demanded that Benedict condemn these and other manifestations of German ‘frightfulness’.33 The Vatican’s response to these demands was to point out that it was receiving complaints about the other’s behaviour from both sides, not just from the Entente. Thus in 1916, Russia was accused by the Germans of sending 1500 Jewish families into the front line on the Eastern Front, and in 1917 Germany also complained about the mistreatment of civilian populations by black British and French troops.34 Indeed, by the end of the war, the Vatican archives were bulging with ‘white’, ‘grey’, ‘green’ and ‘orange’ books produced by belligerents on both sides containing accounts of alleged atrocities perpetrated by the enemy, along with carefully argued and documented ripostes to them.35
The Vatican argued, and quite reasonably, that before it could pass judgement it would need to examine all allegations, thus turning itself into a veritable court of justice, a kind of international war crimes commission for which, of course, it was not equipped: in any case, the nature of the conflict would have made it almost always impossible to carry out proper investigations of the facts.36 Even in the apparently open and shut case of the violation of Belgian neutrality, the Germans produced a weighty tome of evidence in support of their contention that the Belgians had already violated their own neutrality by conversations with the French high command before the outbreak of the war and that Belgian civilians had repeatedly broken the rules of war by firing on German soldiers.37 It could also be claimed with some justification that the British and the French, with very flimsy excuses, had violated the neutrality of Greece in the spring of 1917, taking the country over and deposing its king because of his refusal to comply with their wish to drag Greece into a war against Bulgaria: and they used exactly the same excuse as the Germans – force majeure.38 Gasparri’s other argument was that condemnations would have impeded the Pope’s humanitarian work, of which the Entente countries were the chief beneficiary, but ‘the Holy See preferred the good of suffering humanity’.39 And when the question of responding to demands for the condemnation of atrocities by various powers came up in the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, the consultative body of the Secretariat of State, the very pertinent point was made by more than one cardinal member that such condemnations could seriously damage the Holy See’s peace efforts.40
In the end, the Vatican limited itself to private protests and generic public statements, a condemnation of all atrocities by all sides, as on 22 January 1915, when Benedict declared in a consistorial allocution: ‘And We do proclaim it without modification, condemning openly every injustice by whatever side it has been committed.’41 When it did, very occasionally, single out an individual target, as in the condemnation of the German violation of Belgian neutrality in a note to the Belgian Government in January 1915, it immediately brought down upon itself the fury of the other side. The German press waxed wrathful for several weeks and attacked Benedict as ‘Der Französische Papst’.42 There was another, fairly obvious, reason why Benedict was so unwilling to morally condemn the actions of either side, and one that was in accord with Gasparri’s concern for ‘the supreme interest of the Church’. War has always been a problem for a universalistic, worldwide religion like Roman Catholicism. War, and especially the First World War which was strongly inspired by national rivalries and hatreds, cuts across the the loyalty and solidarity of Catholics in a damaging way for the Church. To have systematically condemned the atrocities of each side would have risked alienating the loyalty to the Papacy of countless numbers of Catholics. This was exactly the same dilemma which faced Pius XII in the Second World War, albeit, given the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities, in an even more serious form.
In following his policy of neutrality, however wisely, Benedict was running grave risks. There was a great deal of hostility towards it, even among Catholics, in the countries of the Entente. Benedict’s position was in strong contrast with that of the ultra-patriotic stance of Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Belgium, who was constantly getting into serious arguments with the German occupying authorities, which caused much annoyance in the Vatican: Benedict went so far as to say, wearily, that Mercier wanted to be a ‘martyr’.43 Benedict and Gasparri tried to restrain Mercier, and at the same time protect him from the Germans.44 Inevitably, Mercier’s heroic stance was much preferred in the Entente countries, so much so that their press presented the Belgian prelate as a kind of ‘anti-pope’ to Benedict.45
During the first eight months of the First World War, the diplomatic policy of Benedict and Gasparri was made easier by the fact that the Vatican was the ‘guest’ of another neutral power, the Kingdom of Italy. All that changed on 24 May 1915, when Italy entered the war on the side of the Entente. Italian intervention in the First World War was to cause the Vatican huge problems, conditioning the whole development of its diplomatic activity. It therefore opposed that intervention quite vigorously and actively until the last moment.
At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 the Italian government had decided to remain neutral. In the circumstances, this was really the only course of action open to the Italians. Even though she was the third partner in the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, Italy had nothing to gain by going to war on the side of her allies. The attempt by the government of Salandra (prime minister) and Sonnino (foreign minister) to persuade Vienna to sacrifice the terre irredente (literally ‘unredeemed lands’), that is Trieste and Trento, two Italian-speaking territories still under Habsburg control, as the price of Italian military support, or even continuing neutrality, failed. Vienna believed that a cession of territory on the principle of nationality would undermine the whole basis of the empire. The presence of the British and French navies in the Mediterranean was a further disincentive to hostilities with the Entente. In any case, there was little support from Italian public opinion for entering the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary: only the Nationalist extremists were in favour of this option.46 Eight months later the Italians had abandoned neutrality and in the secret Treaty of London agreed to enter the war on the side of Britain, France and Russia. The primary motivation for intervening in the war was to complete the process of Italian unification by acquiring the ‘unredeemed lands’ and secure a more defensible north-eastern frontier. This ‘sacred egoism’ justified Italy’s ditching of her allies of thirty-five years’ standing. Italy was made some vague promises in relation to future colonial gains in Africa and the Middle East. Another factor influencing Salandra and Sonnino in their decision to go to war was the belief that participation in a successful war would solve Italy’s domestic problems, by generating national unity and restoring the authority of the political class, seriously damaged, so they believed, by the compromises made by their arch-enemy, the Italian elder statesman Giovanni Giolitti, with Socialism and political Catholicism in the preceding fourteen years.
As soon as they became aware of the desire on the part of Salandra and Sonnino to abandon Italian neutrality, Benedict and Gasparri opposed it. Their reasons for doing so were numerous and obvious. In the first place, they were extremely anxious to prevent an extension of the war, and therefore of the bloodletting. There was also the fear that an extension of the war, especially the emergence of an Austro-Hungarian/Italian front line, would prolong the conflict. For the Vatican, another powerful consideration was the direct threat which Italian involvement in the war posed to the survival of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: we have already seen how crucial the Vatican believed the survival of that empire was to the preservation of a beneficial status quo in Europe from the point of view of its wider geopolitical and spiritual interests. In this regard, in January 1915, Gasparri sent this letter to the papal nuncio in Vienna:
At this moment, the Holy Father, who has the greatest of concern for the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy due to a particular affection towards it and its August and Venerable Sovereign, as well as for the highest interest of the Church itself, notably the survival of the only Catholic great power, not to mention peace in Italy, wishes to open his heart to the Emperor, through your good offices, advising him in the strongest possible terms to avoid war with Italy at all costs.47
Benedict and Gasparri also had specific concerns about the involvement of Italy in the conflict. After the experience of ‘Red Week’ in June 1914, they seriously doubted the capacity of the Italian State to survive a major armed conflict; like many other observers, they feared that such an experience, especially if Italy were to be defeated, would precipitate social and political revolution. In this they shared the concern of the Giolitti, who opposed Italian intervention until it became clear to him that the King, Victor Emmanuel III, had committed himself to the project and that for the Italian Parliament to reject the Treaty of London could lead to the monarch’s abdication.48 But of course, another serious worry was how Italian involvement in the conflict would affect the Holy See and its diplomacy. How would the war affect the Law of Guarantees and the arrangements it had made for the Vatican’s relations with other powers? There was no provision in the Law for the eventuality that Italy could find herself at war against powers with whom the Holy See continued to have amicable relations. In that case, how would the Vatican be able to preserve its neutrality, maintaining the distinction between its policies and those of a belligerent Italian government? Finally, according to Garzia, Benedict was afraid that if Italy entered the war she would inevitably be present at a peace conference but that the Holy See would not and thus would fail to make any improvement in its position vis-à-vis Italy.49
The Vatican’s efforts up to the last minute before Italian intervention to mediate between Italy and Austro-Hungary and thus avert Italian entry into the war are thoroughly documented in the Vatican archives. The main thrust of those efforts consisted of an attempt to persuade the government in Vienna to make significant territorial concessions to the Italians. In January 1915, for example, Gasparri addressed an appeal to the Emperor Franz Josef through the papal nuncio in Vienna: ‘The salvation of the Empire requires the Emperor to make this painful sacrifice and to make it immediately.’50 The Vatican also acted as a bearer of conciliatory missives between German and Austro-Hungarian governments and Italy in the negotiations over the cession of territory in the ‘unredeemed lands’, and over a putative German loan to Italy, etc.51 When it became clear that the Catholic party in Austria, the Christian Socials, were hostile to the idea of territorial concessions to Italy, it tried to use the good offices of Matthias Erzberger to dissuade them from their opposition.52 It also sought to persuade the Italian government to accept Austrian concessions, which was difficult given the slowness and reluctance of the Emperor and his foreign minister Burian.53 As late as 18 May, Benedict was still trying to persuade Salandra that the Austrians would make satisfactory concessions.54
The serious consequences for the Vatican of Italy’s entry into the war very quickly became apparent. Crucial was the position of the embassies of Austria-Hungary and the German states. Unfortunately, the solution adopted in the Second World War of taking the embassies of belligerent powers into the Vatican was not really feasible in the First World War because the Law of Guarantees did not recognize the Vatican as an independent, sovereign State.55 The most that the Law granted was a degree of ‘extraterritoriality’: the Holy See was not even the actual legal owner of the Vatican and Lateran palaces, etc., because the Law only said that the Pope ‘enjoyed’ them.56 When the Italian Government asked the Vatican to take moral responsibility for the good behaviour of the embassies if they remained on Italian soil, so that they would not constitute a threat to Italian security, Benedict and Gasparri refused, preferring them to withdraw to Switzerland for the duration of hostilities. Taking responsibility for their good behaviour would have involved supervising their telegram traffic with Berlin and Vienna. There is some evidence that the Central Powers rather relished the ‘banishment’ of their embassies to the Vatican, since it made it possible for their propaganda to paint the intentions of the Italian government in a bad light.57 With the departure of their embassies, however, the balance swung against the influence of Germans and Austrians in the Vatican. This situation was obviously not satisfactory for the Central Powers. The Germans in particular feared that the obstruction of communication with the Vatican would impede their influence there, which was one reason why they proposed various territorial solutions of the Roman Question.58 Benedict and Gasparri seriously considered asking the embassies of the Entente Powers to withdraw as well in order to preserve the appearance of Vatican neutrality, but abandoned the idea as unnecessary and counterproductive: it would merely have further intensified the Vatican’s difficulties in communicating with other powers.59
The seizure of Palazzo Venezia, the former embassy of Austria to the Holy See, by the Italian government in August 1916, following one of the first Austrian air raids with resulting Italian civilian casualties, in this case in Venice (Venezia), caused further alarm in the Vatican and tense relations with Italy.60 Benedict claimed that the incident once more demonstrated the inadequacies of the Law of Guarantees, fearing that the Vatican itself might suffer the same fate as Palazzo Venezia at the hands of an Italian government of a more strongly anti-clerical colour.61 His worst fears appeared to have been realized when the Italian government laid claim to the Collegio Teutonico, the German College which lies on the very edge of the Vatican; though the attempt was prevented, it must have made Benedict and Gasparri think very hard about the future.62 The exigencies of the war also produced practical inconveniences for the Vatican, the call-up of its staff, lay and ecclesiastical, and members of the Papal Court and even high-ranking prelates: thus Monti spent much time seeking exemptions for members of the various ‘armed forces’ of the Vatican, especially the Noble Guard, and leading ecclesiastics, including Mgrs Pacelli and Tedeschini.63
The withdrawal of the Austrian and German embassies to Switzerland caused precisely the problems of communication for the Vatican which had been predicted, but the problem went further than that. Telegram and mail traffic to and from the Vatican was frequently subject to Italian censorship, causing enormous delays, much to Benedict’s fury. Through Baron Monti, and other go-betweens, Benedict and Gasparri repeatedly protested against these abuses.64 The use of Vatican diplomatic bags (or those of other neutral powers) was no real solution either, as Italy and other belligerent powers on both sides were not averse to intercepting them from time to time (see p. 77). Another consequence of Italy’s entry into the war was that L’Osservatore Romano was censored like any other Italian newspaper, as was the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica. Benedict felt, and not without reason, that the military censors were rather more lenient towards the anti-clerical rather than to the Catholic press, with serious consequences for him during moments of tension between the Vatican and Italy. As he repeatedly complained, his enemies were allowed to slander and insult him at will, but L’Osservatore Romano and other Catholic newspapers were frequently muzzled when they tried to defend him, the most notable example being when the anti-clerical journal Il Travaso produced a scurrilous poem against the Pope.65 Though the Italians did not impede the visits of ecclesiastics of enemy powers, like Cardinal Hartmann for example, they subjected them to intolerable surveillance.66 The Germans even complained that due to Italian pressure, the Vatican was failing to appoint the numbers of German and Austrian cardinals which the size of the Catholic populations of the Central Powers merited.67 The precariousness of the Pope’s position in an Italy at war was revealed in an even more acute way in November 1916 when the Emperor Franz Josef died. Before giving the go-ahead for a solemn funeral for the deceased Catholic head of state in the semi-private Chapel of the Countess Matilda in the Vatican Palace, Benedict felt it prudent to seek assurances from the Italian Government, via Baron Monti, that it would maintain law and order during the course of the proceedings.68
In these circumstances, as Garzia demonstrates, though direct, informal relations between Italy and the Holy See usually remained good, the Roman Question had once again become a real issue in their relationship, after years of merely ritual protests.69 Moreover, the Roman Question had returned to the international agenda. The Spaniards, hoping to exploit their former links with Benedict in an attempt to play a major role in international affairs once more by hosting a peace conference in Madrid, also offered the Pope ‘sanctuary’ in the Escorial in May 1915.70 Benedict turned down the offer: in fact, he never intended to leave Rome and certainly the situation in Rome at that time in no way warranted it, though there is evidence of plans being drawn up for such a contingency.71 A more significant initiative was that of the Central Powers, who sought to exploit the revival of the Roman Question as a weapon against Italy. In October 1915, Matthias Erzberger, on behalf of the German Centre Party proposed that the Law of Guarantees should be amended to provide the Papacy with real territorial sovereignty over the Vatican and adjacent areas down to the Tiber, commutation of the financial obligations of Italy to the Papacy and international guarantees of the new order.72 This found no favour in the Vatican. Indeed Gasparri felt compelled to distance the Vatican from this partisan initiative. In an interview with Il Corriere della Sera on 28 June 1915 he insisted that the Holy See was not interested in foreign schemes but rather that it expected ‘an appropriate resolution of its situation not from foreign arms but from the triumph of those sentiments of justice which it is hoped will become stronger in the Italian people in accordance with their real interests’.73
Though it was not appreciated at the time, this declaration would later make a negotiated solution of the Roman Question possible. But it was too late in preventing the Italian government from striking a decisive diplomatic blow against the Vatican. In the autumn of 1914, Sonnino had become alarmed by evidence that the Vatican was determined to get to the peace conference, by further evidence that the victorious Central Powers would use that conference to impose a solution of the Roman Question upon Italy and by an earlier, ingenious plan of Erzberger’s for resolving the Roman Question and avoiding Italian intervention.74 In response, he insisted upon inserting into the Treaty of London signed with the Entente Powers, a clause ruling out the possibility that a papal representative could participate in an eventual conference: ‘France, Great Britain and Russia shall support any such opposition as Italy shall make to any proposal in the direction of introducing a representative of the Holy See in any peace negotiations or negotiations for the settlement of questions raised by the war.’75 News of this clause reached the ears of Benedict and Gasparri in January 1916, but was not confirmed until the Bolsheviks published the texts of all the secret treaties they had found in the foreign office archives in Petrograd in December 1917.76 Until the last, however, various members of the Italian government, including Salandra, Sonnino and Orlando, persistently denied the existence of the clause, which did nothing to strengthen Benedict’s trust in them.77
While Italy had remained neutral, the bulk of Italian Catholics had also preserved a neutralist stance. That stance can be explained by a number of factors. There was a vein of stubborn Catholic intransigence whose sympathies inevitably lay with Catholic Austria rather than with the masonic, democratic and Protestant or Orthodox powers of the Entente.78 Another principled element in Catholic neutralism was the objection to Italian intervention on the grounds of the ‘Just War’ theory: clearly, Italian intervention against Austria could not be justified on the grounds of defence.79 But this feeling was restricted to a small part of the Catholic clergy and intelligentsia: the main source of opposition eventually came from the grass roots of the Catholic movement, and in particular from the Catholic peasantry who, like their Socialist counterparts, knew only too well that in the event of war they would provide the ‘trench fodder’. Not surprisingly, the leading figure among Catholic peasants, the MP Guido Miglioli, remained a neutralist to the bitter end.80 The neutral stance of the Papacy itself was a very powerful influence on Italian Catholics, but when the Italian Parliament voted for intervention in May 1915, Catholics were deeply split, with some leading Catholic figures like the priest Luigi Sturzo and the MP Filippo Meda opting for war. In response to this situation, Giuseppe Dalla Torre, by now the national president of the Unione Popolare, the precursor of the future Catholic Action organization, followed his instructions from the Vatican and laid down an official Catholic line: ‘All support for the war, but no responsibility for it.’81 This did not make the Church popular with the interventionists, who included the vociferous, violently anti-clerical Futurists and former extreme Left elements, most notably Benito Mussolini. Equally, Benedict XV was not happy with the more markedly pro-war, patriotic tone of some Catholic associations and clergy.82 It was a difficult, confused situation. Italian intervention had undermined his peace hopes and efforts, but the patriotic enthusiasm of Italian Catholics could also very easily compromise the Vatican’s neutrality in the eyes of the Central Powers: L’Osservatore Romano displayed a predictable coolness to the announcement of the entry of Filippo Meda into the Boselli ‘national’ government in 1916.83 Meda’s appointment was meant to signify the inclusion of even the Catholics in a government of ‘national solidarity’, but Benedict insisted that ‘Meda only represents Meda’ – a rather unrealistic attitude in the circumstances.84 On the other hand, he complied when asked by the Italian government to mobilize the support of bishops and clergy for the war effort, and in particular for government loans.85 Ironically, the contribution of Italian Catholics to the patriotic cause was never enough to satisfy most interventionists, and particularly their press. Their hostility towards Benedict, and Vatican policy generally, would reach its height in November 1917 after the cataclysmic Italian defeat at Caporetto when, paradoxically, Catholic commitment to the war effort was most obvious and complete.
At the beginning of 1917, Benedict was faced by a scandal, ‘the Gerlach Affair’, which threatened to seriously damage Italo–Vatican relations and thoroughly undermine the credibility of his neutralist stance. Italian police investigations, following the blowing up of the Italian battleship Leonardo Da Vinci in Taranto harbour in August 1916, and of the Benedetto Brin in Brindisi harbour a year earlier, eventually led to the Vatican, to the door of Mgr Rudolph Gerlach, papal secret chamberlain.86 Gerlach was accused of being the leading light in an Italian espionage ring, with the role of financier and link to German and Austrian intelligence. It was bad enough that someone so close to the Pope should be accused of such activities, but it was also alleged that he had maintained contact with his intelligence bosses via the Vatican diplomatic courier and brought the funds for the spies into Italy by that same means.87
Inevitably, a number of quite fantastic stories were spun around the figure of Rudolph Gerlach, especially at the time. Apart from being described as a having led the life of a sexual libertine in Vienna, with Cardinal Agliardi, then nuncio, as his companion,88 he was accused of having been ‘planted’ in the Vatican by German intelligence long before the war,89 of trying to set up a refuelling base for German submarines on the Calabrian coast,90 and it has been suggested that he was not even a priest – but there is not, in fact, a scrap of evidence to support any of these claims.91 Nor does there appear to have been very much truth in the formal charges against him, even though he was convicted when the case against him and his fellow-defendants came to trial, and sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour.92 Much of the case against him rested on the testimony of a renegade priest Mario Tedeschi who claimed to have had close relations with Gerlach, but whose credibility as a witness was badly damaged by the fact that he was unable to recognize his photograph: his evidence was later cancelled from the court records and he was subsequently prosecuted for perjury.93 One of the other accused, Valente, withdrew the charges he made against Gerlach, but the court ignored this development.94 Papers in the Vatican archives confirm Gasparri’s claims that Gerlach’s correspondence with Muhlberg, the Prussian minister to the Vatican, Ritter, the Bavarian minister, and Erzberger was, as he and the Vatican always maintained, innocent, being part of Benedict’s diplomatic and humanitarian efforts, but that does not rule out the possibility that he was also using the correspondence for other, illicit purposes.95
Solid evidence that he was involved in the plot to blow up the battleships or that he was truly a spy is strangely lacking, though Erzberger’s biographer claims that he was in German pay.96 At most, it would seem likely that Gerlach did act as a paymaster for two anti-interventionist, Italian newspapers, Il Bastone and La Vittoria. There is even less evidence that he had used the Vatican for espionage purposes; indeed, the military tribunal in its final judgement made a point of saying that the Vatican as such was not involved in his spying activities.97 The fact that Gerlach was allowed to leave Italy in January 1917, being escorted to the Swiss border by Italian police before the trial opened, suggests that the Italian authorities were anxious to limit the embarrassment to the Vatican, but also that they suspected he would have been able to make a very creditable defence had he been present at his trial.98 On the other hand, his conviction and sentence satisfied both Allied governments and Italian anti-clericals.
The Gerlach Affair attracted a lot of criticism of Benedict, both from outside and within the Vatican, casting doubt upon the soundness of his judgement. De Salis claimed that Gerlach’s appointment owed much to his ingratiating contacts with Benedict when the latter came to Rome to receive the red hat in May 1914 and for the conclave three months later.99 Peters confirms this and he also describes Gerlach as ‘one of his [Benedict’s] most intimate friends’.100 Gerlach was undoubtedly one of Benedict’s closest personal assistants but it is unlikely that he was a ‘friend’ given the Pope’s very formal relations with his entourage. It would seem, however, that Gerlach’s cheerful, engaging personality was a comfort to Benedict, overriding his natural prudence.101 De Salis backed up his argument against Benedict by claiming that a number of leading Vatican personalities, including Cardinal Merry Del Val, had warned him against appointing Gerlach to his service, or keeping him on after the Italian entry into the war, claims which are confirmed by Carlo Monti.102 In Benedict’s defence it should be said that in the four years that Gerlach had spent in Rome, from 1910 to 1914, before he met Benedict, he had given no cause for concern to his superiors, and had progressed rapidly from the Capranica to the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, where he was appointed student prefect, and was made a judge of the Tribunal of the Rota in 1911.103 Peters makes the point that under the ‘rigoristic’ rule of St Pius X and Cardinal Merry Del Val, no one on whom the merest breath of suspicion fell would have lasted long in the Vatican and its associated institutions and educational establishments.104
Benedict was also criticized for standing by Gerlach. He believed firmly and unshakeably in Gerlach’s innocence; in one of his letters to Gerlach in April 1917, just before his trial opened in Rome, he wrote, ‘I send you my blessing with my old and unchanged affection’,105 and as late as 1919, Benedict reaffirmed his belief in Gerlach’s innocence by making him a domestic prelate.106 Leading Vatican personalities, including Cardinals De Lai and Gasparri, and the Sostituto, Mgr Tedeschini, were unhappy with the Pope’s obstinacy in the matter, and De Lai urged that ‘the Holy See separate its cause from that (of Gerlach); given his indiscretions and lack of common sense, the Holy See will probably suffer badly’.107 Yet Benedict’s instincts were not entirely incorrect. For example, his suspicion that Gerlach had been convicted by a ‘masonic sanhedrin’ was borne out by both Orlando and Boselli, Italian prime minister at the time of the affair: the latter actually admitted to Monti that there were too many masons on the military tribunal which tried Gerlach.108
Despite the benevolent attitude of Benedict, Gerlach did not make things easy for the Vatican after his exit from Italy. His withdrawal to Switzerland was bad enough: as Benedict himself remarked, that country was regarded as an ‘espionage centre’.109 To make matters worse, in March Gerlach went to Germany and Austria where he made much-publicized visits to the King of Bavaria, the German and Austrian Emperors and Hindenburg, who all treated him as a hero and bestowed decorations on him, as a result of which people began to think that he really was a spy.110
The Gerlach Affair illustrates very graphically all of the difficulties of Benedict’s relationship with Italy during the war; indeed, the period from January to July 1917 was the one in which that relationship reached its lowest ebb. The affair brought out the worst in Benedict, his obstinacy, his notorious irascibility and not a little paranoia. At its height, in early June, Monti recorded that he found the Pope ‘very excited, he told me that he had decided not to receive me again as the representative of the government, with which he resolved to have no further relations’.111 It is also indicative of the tension at that time, that Monti felt obliged to warn the Italian Prime Minister that if there were any attacks on the Vatican in the wake of the Gerlach trial the Catholic associations would rise en masse against the government, though it has to be said that there was remarkably little criticism of the Vatican in the Italian press.112 On the other hand, despite the brave and untiring efforts of Monti, Italo–Vatican relations remained volatile throughout the period of hostilities between Italy and Austria-Hungary, periodically erupting into tension over such matters as the departure of the ambassadors of the Central Powers, Palazzo Venezia, Article 15 of the Treaty of London, the speeches of Government ministers, especially the blatantly anti-clerical one of Bissolati at Cremona in 1915,113 and attacks on the Pope in the anti-clerical press. It is not surprising, therefore, that Benedict dug his heels in over the Gerlach Affair: he tended to see it as a part of a masonic, anti-clerical plot and refused to be bullied. There was always a little anti-masonic paranoia on the part of both Benedict and his Secretary of State, but it was not entirely unjustified by events. Nor was their hostility to Sonnino, the half-Jewish, half-Protestant and completely irremovable Italian Foreign Minister, unjustified either. According to Orlando, ‘Sonnino is the systematic opponent of any proposal made in the Council of Ministers in favour of the Holy See.’114 Orlando also admitted that though many would have liked to remove Sonnino from his post, it was impossible.115 It was in these very difficult circumstances that Benedict and Gasparri were forced to conduct their diplomacy during the First World War.
1. ‘Benedictus PP. XV, Ad Universos Orbis Catholicos’, La CC, 1542, 19 September 1914, I–IV.
2. As quoted in Carlen (ed.), IV, p. 146.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., pp. 144–5.
5. Ibid.
6. AAES, Italia, 1427, fasc. 569, ‘Imparzialità della S. Sede’, memorandum by Gasparri (no date).
7. Zivojinovic (1978), p. 4.
8. ASV, SS, Guerra, 1914–18, rubrica 244, fasc. 63/64.
9. As quoted in Leslie, p. 214: this book also chronicles the indefatigable efforts of Gasquet and his colleagues to offset German and Austro-Hungarian influences in the Vatican, especially in the period before Italy’s entry into the war in May 1915.
10. As quoted in Epstein, p. 121.
11. Monticone, p. 9.
12. Leslie, pp. 213–14.
13. Ibid.
14. Zivojinovic (1978), pp. 12 and 13.
15. See Epstein, Appendix II, pp. 408–9.
16. Diario, II, p. 3, 3 January 1917, where Monti says that Benedict told him the bulk of Peter’s Pence came from first the United States and then from Germany.
17. As quoted in Hachey (ed.), p. xx.
18. Zivojinovic (1978), p. 12.
19. Rumi (ed.) (1990), p. 22, also makes the point that there was traditionally a close personal relationship between the Popes and the Habsburg family in the nineteenth century: ‘The archdukes of the various branches of the Habsburgs grew up in comparative familiarity with the Pope: from Vienna came ingenuous poetry and hand-knitted goods and Rome replied with medals and objects of personal devotion.’
20. Randall, p. 13.
21. Quoted in Hachey (ed.), p. xx.
22. Diario, I, p. 416, 9 August 1916.
23. Vistalli, p. 39.
24. Garzia, p. 68.
25. Poincaré, pp. 305–6.
26. Garzia, 14.
27. Ibid., p. 68; Leslie, p. 225.
28. Loiseau (1956), p. 100 and May 1956, p. 54.
29. Garzia, p. 61.
30. Panzera, p. 323.
31. Gregory, p. 87.
32. Garzia, pp. 17 and 20.
33. De Salis, report on his mission, in Hachey (ed.), p. 7.
34. AAES, Stati Ecclesiastici, 1316, fasc. 455, ‘Libri diplomatici pubblicati da vari Stati belligeranti, Libro bianco tedesco sulle crudeltà delle truppe russe contro i civili e i prigionieri di guerra tedeschi’.
35. Ibid. This file contains fifteen such remonstrances from the various belligerents, plus from one neutral, Holland.
36. The Holy See did possess at this time two major tribunals, the Segnatura and the Sacra Rota, but both were, of course, competent only in canon law, and not civil/public law of any kind.
37. AAES, Stati Ecclesiastici, 1316, fasc. 455, Germania–Inghilterra–Austria–Francia–Belgio–Olanda, 1914–1918, ‘Libro tedesco sulla neutralità violata dal Belgio’.
38. Van Der Kiste, pp. 102–17.
39. AAES, Stati Ecclesiastici, 1427, fasc. 569, ‘Imparzialità della S. Sede’, p. 9.
40. Ibid., 1369/1372, fasc. 517, minutes of meeting of 16 August 1916; the Italian historian Luigi Salvatorelli, pp. 9–10, was of the same opinion: ‘It was difficult for the Vatican to try to act as a moral arbiter in the conflict. The Vatican was liable to find itself utterly cut off from one side or another.’
41. As quoted in Peters, p. 121.
42. Ibid.
43. Diario, I, p. 189, 19 January 1915; Morozzo Della Rocca (1996), p. 563.
44. Ibid., p. 564.
45. Ibid.
46. For a detailed account of the ‘Intervention Crisis’ in Italy, see Seton-Watson, pp. 413–50.
47. ASV, SS, Guerra, 1914–1918, rub. 244, fasc. 29, Gasparri to Scapinelli, 12 January 1915.
48. Seton-Watson, p. 449.
49. Garzia, p. 20: according to Hachey (ed.), p. xvii, the Vatican feared for the effects of Italian intervention on the flow of Peter’s Pence.
50. ASV, SS, Guerra, fasc. 258, Gasparri to Scapinelli, 17 January 1915.
51. Ibid.
52. ASV, SS, Guerra, 1914–1918, fasc. 29, Erzberger to Benedict, 8 March 1915.
53. Ibid., letter of Salandra to Gasparri.
54. Seton-Watson, p. 448.
55. Chadwick (1986), pp. 114–24.
56. For the text see Pollard (1985), Appendix I.
57. Diario, I, p. 219, 24 January 1915.
58. Stehlin (1974), p. 421.
59. Garzia, p. 61.
60. Diario, I, p. 437, 30 August 1916.
61. Ibid.
62. AAES, 953, 343–4, Roma, 1918–1920, ‘Ospizio di S. Maria dell’ Anima e Campo Santo confisca’.
63. There are numerous references in the Diario to the exemptions which Monti was asked to obtain; see for example volume I, pp. 212–3, 20 March 1915.
64. Felice, pp. 169–77.
65. Diario, I, p. 241, 4 July 1915.
66. Ibid., I, p. 293, 1 December 1915.
67. Stehlin (1974), p. 420.
68. AAES, Italia, 879, fasc. 316, 1916, ‘Cappella papale per i funerali dell’Imperatore d’Austria’.
69. Garzia, p. 105.
70. Ibid.
71. AAES, ‘Italia e Principato di Monaco’, 1369/1372, 517, pro-memoria of 10 August 1917.
72. Epstein, pp. 144–5.
73. As quoted in Dalla Torre, p. 1292.
74. Epstein, pp. 144–5.
75. As quoted in Grenville, pp. 24–7.
76. Seton-Watson, p. 449.
77. Diario, I, p. 339, 28 January 1916.
78. Dalla Torre, p. 1294.
79. Ibid.
80. For an account of the behaviour of Italian Catholics during the Intervention Crisis, see Scoppola, pp. xli–xlii.
81. As quoted in De Rosa (1954), p. 423.
82. Molinari, p. 429.
83. Meda, p. 56.
84. See Benedict’s annotations of the L’Osservatore Romano article of 14 September 1915, in ASV, SS, 1916, rub. 165, 857, 313.
85. Diario, I, p. 315, 1 January 1916.
86. The best, most succinct and up-to-date account of the Gerlach affair is to be found in Alvarez (1996); for contemporary accounts, see De Salis, Report on My Mission, PRO, FO, 7671/cl5334/8227/22, in Hachey (ed.), pp. 18–19 and The Times, 8 August 1917, p. 16, ‘The Italian Spy Trial’.
87. The Times, ibid.
88. Dillon, p. 11.
89. Diario, II, pp. 76–7, 1 May 1917.
90. Ibid.
91. Interview with the Della Chiesa family, October 1996.
92. The Times, 8 August 1917, p. 16.
93. Ibid.
94. Diario, II, p. 120, 21 June 1917.
95. AAES, Italia, 1917–1918, 930, fasc. 335, letter of Gerlach to Benedict, 17 May 1917.
96. Epstein, p. 163.
97. The Times, 8 August 1917, p. 16.
98. De Salis report, in Hachey (ed.), p. 19.
99. Ibid., p. 18.
100. Peters, p. 132.
101. Ibid., p. 127: The file on a young seminarian, Diana, recommended to the pope by his sister, Countess Persico, in AAES, Stati Ecclesiastici, p. 152 and Monti’s references to him in his Diario, II, pp. 202–4, 10 November 1917, pp. 208–9, 16 November 1917, p. 356, 16 July 1918 and p. 359, 30 July 1918 all suggest that Benedict in his lonely ‘imprisonment’ was a little indulgent towards personable and plausible young men.
102. De Salis report, in Hachey (ed.), p. 19: Monti, II, p. 135, 16 July 1917.
103. AAES, Italia, 1917, 893–4, fasc. 323, contains assorted papers relating to his curriculum vitae.
104. Peters, p. 129.
105. AAES, Italia, 1917, 893–4, fasc. 326, 4 July 1917.
106. Ibid., 12 March 1919
107. Diario, II, p. 105, 2 June 1917.
108. Ibid., II, p. 92, 11 May 1917.
109. AAES, Italia, 1917, 893–4, 326. letter of 17 April 1917.
110. Ibid., letter from Mgr Sardi, nuncio in Munich, 16 March 1917: as this file demonstrates, the Gerlach Affair was to haunt the Vatican for several years. In April 1924 Gerlach wrote a thinly veiled blackmail letter, threatening to publish Benedict’s letters to him. He was only finally persuaded to burn it in December of that year.
111. Diario, II, pp. 108–10, 7 June 1917.
112. Ibid., II, p. 120, 22 June 1917.
113. Ibid., I, pp. 494–501, 30 October and 2 November 1916.
114. Ibid., II, 13 August 1918.
115. Ibid.