"Why, then, these complaints you speak of?" Roger asked.
" 'Tis largely owing to the hatred borne him by the Church."
"Yet I have heard that he was educated for it, and is a most religious man."
"He was, and is. He became a sovereign only owing to the death of his elder brother, Charles; but his views on religion are far from orthodox. He considers it his business not only to censure the morals of his priesthood but also to reform the rituals of the Church itself."
"Does he incline to Protestantism, then?"
"By no means; although he expresses great repugnance to all customs bordering on the superstitious and the habit of making religious ceremonies into gaudy parades. For instance, one edict of his which has given almost universal offence is that concerning burials. By it all corpses are removed the night following death in a plain shroud to the nearest church. There they receive simple benediction, after which they are taken to a common mortuary. No candles or singing are allowed. The following day the bodies are taken in a wooden cart to the cemetery outside the city, and there buried without further ceremony, as they come, two in a grave; and at that lacking coffins. The law applies to high and low alike, so a noble lady may find herself buried side by side with a scrofulous pauper, or a priest next to a harlot."
"What an extraordinary idea!" Roger exclaimed. "And 'tis harsh indeed that families should be debarred from ordering suitably the last rites for their loved ones. I wonder that such an outrageous interference with liberty is not openly defied, and His Highness forced to withdraw so monstrous an edict."
The Tuscan shrugged. "We are by nature a law-abiding people, and have no means of forcing him to do anything. He is an absolute Monarch, and does not even make a pretence of consulting a Senate, as did the Medici. 'Tis fortunate for us that he is, generally speaking, a beneficent autocrat; yet his absolutism is another factor which makes for his unpopularity, as the demand for popular government in France is not without its repercussions here."
"In what other ways has he set Holy Church by the ears?"
"He and his principal adviser, Scipione Ricci, the Bishop of Pistoria and Prato, have encouraged the conducting of church services in Tuscan instead of Latin."
"I see no great harm in that."
"Nor I; but the old-fashioned resent it. However, 'tis the priesthood that bears him the most bitter grudge, owing to his having despoiled it of the wealth and power that it has enjoyed for centuries. Twenty years ago Tuscany was entirely priest-ridden. Thousands of begging friars blackmailed their way from door to door, and many thousands of monks idled their lives away in monastries battening on the labours of the peasants. Social custom, too, decreed that every girl lacking a dowry should take the veil; and you can imagine the state of things which followed the unnatural segregation of so many healthy young women. The father confessors and visiting prelates had by long custom come to regard the convents as seraglios, and as a result infanticide in one or other of them had become a daily occurrence. But Peter Leopold put an end to all that. He raised the age for taking the veil and made it in many other ways more difficult to do so, thus greatly reducing the number of young nuns; and in order to give the others something to think about, apart from lechery, he turned all the convents into schools for the education of the local children."
"That seems an admirable measure."
"True; but you cannot expect the priests to regard it in that light. Imagine, too, the wailing of the hosts of begging friars when a law was passed reducing their numbers by four-fifths, so that the majority of them were forced to return to the land and do an honest day's work upon it; and the outcry that was made by the monastic orders when certain of them were suppressed and their revenues taken from them."
"Then the Grand Duke has followed the examples of other monarchs, and enriched himself at the expense of the Church."
"On the contrary, Monsieur. He funded the money so obtained to abolish tithes, and provide better stipends for the poorer clergy."
"In that case both his peasantry and village priests should be grateful to him."
Signor Pisani shook his head. "Had the country folk any sense they would be, but they are ignorant and superstitious; so an easy prey to the multitude of monks and friars he has deprived of an easy living, who go about poisoning the people's minds against him."
"Yet surely in these measures he has had the support of the better educated among the laity?"
"To some extent; but they have their own complaints against other reforms he has introduced. He has deprived the nobility of nearly all their old privileges. In Tuscany now no one is exempt from taxation. All must pay according to their means. In that His Highness does not even spare himself. He even has the value of his art collections assessed each year and pays revenue upon them."
Roger raised his eyebrows. "That is indeed an altruistic gesture. Apart from his strange ordinance about burials he seems to me a model Monarch."
"He is certainly far better than most, for in a score of years he has doubled the wealth of Tuscany. By making all classes subject to taxation he has reduced the average to eighteen pauls per annum per head, which must be considerably lighter than anywhere else in Europe. I am told that even in England it is in the neighbourhood of forty-five."
By a swift calculation Roger arrived at 8s. as against £2, but Signor Pisani was continuing:
"In spite of that he has succeeded in extinguishing our National Debt, and by allowing free trade in corn he has brought its price down to a level which enables us to live cheaper here than in any other part of Italy. Moreover, he is always devising new ways to encourage trade and agriculture. Recently he has offered a gold medal every year for the proprietor who plants the greatest number of new olive trees, and the plantings of the winner this year exceeded forty thousand."
With a shake of his head Roger took up the Chianti flagon to refill the glasses, and said: "Really, in view of all this, despite the antagonism he has aroused among the priesthood, I cannot conceive why he is not more generally regarded with affection by his people."
His informative host sank his deep voice to a lower note. "I feel sure, Monsieur, that you will not repeat me, but His Highness has one failing which would render him obnoxious to any race. He is the most furtive and suspicious man that ever was born. I am told that at times he even deceives his most intimate advisers, and 'tis certain that he sets spies upon them. Not content with that, he sets spies upon the spies. His secret police are legion, his curiosity unbounded, and he is for ever prying into the private affairs of every official or person of any consequence at all in the whole country."
"When he learns that they have committed some fault does he act the tyrant?" Roger enquired.
"Nay; as a ruler he is remarkable for his humanity. He has much improved the dispensation of justice, abolishing the courts of the feudal lords, and securing for the meanest of his subjects the right of appeal to the highest tribunal. He has also done away with torture and reformed the prison system. But no one likes the thought that their every act is spied upon and reported."
"What sort of a man is he personally?" said Roger, now working round to the matter that particularly interested him. "Is he easy of access?"
"By no means," came the prompt reply. "He works too hard to be able to give the time to appear in public except on State occasions. And his natural secretiveness provides a bar against his indulging freely in social intercourse with his nobility. He is most autocratic in temperament, believing that the people are quite incapable of reforming themselves, and that their condition can only be bettered by divine inspiration interpreted through their rulers. That, too, is the mainspring of all his religious reforms, as he regards himself as established by God to be the guardian and tutor of his people. Yet, pious as he is by nature, he does not deny himself mistresses."