Search -
Count Campello and Catholic Reform in Italy
Count Campello and Catholic Reform in Italy Author:Alexander Robertson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: (69) CHAPTER I. Qampello the Sx - Qan on. 1881. It is impossible for us to estimate the heroism Count Campello displayed in thus separating himself f... more »or conscience sake from the Church of Rome. He abandoned a position that numbers covet and struggle to acquire. He sacrificed an income of six hundred a year (equivalent fully to a thousand in England), which by raising his little finger he could have doubled. He turned his back on the princely status of a Cardinal that lay before him in the near future, the bestowment of which had twicealready been hinted at. He alienated from him many of his old friends and relatives whose love was dear to him. How great was that wrench may be gathered from words written by him on a photograph of himself, which he gave to the late Rev. C. R. Conybeare, " Straniero tra i miei" ("a stranger amongst mine own"). He left the Vatican, too, singly and alone ; and, like Abraham of old, in faith he went out not knowing whither he went. He has often told me how disappointed he was that none of all those in the Vatican who were one with him in belief, dared immediately to follow him. Lastly, he forsook the Church of Rome ignorant of the tenets and forms of worship of Evangelical Churches, and incapacitated to a large extent by his past position for working in connection with any of them. But I have only given in part the negative side of Count Campello's sacrifices. When he left the Vatican he was certain, as indeed he states in his letter of resignation, that his motives and action would bemisunderstood and misrepresented. He knew that he would first become an object of kind attention on the part of the Vatican, in order if possible to win him back ; and that, when that policy proved futile, he would then become an object of implacable hatred and ...« less