madiai

ROSA MADIAI PULLINI (+1871), a woman of the people, of modest condition, she and her husband found themselves at the centre of an international dispute: a public commission of inquiry, diplomatic intervention from all over Europe, biographies and newspaper articles. The Madiais, converted to Protestantism like Count Guicciardini, were sentenced to prison, but the sentence was commuted to exile because of the tremendous reaction created by the severity of the sentence. Exiled to Nice, they returned to Florence in 1859 to end their days in a modest little lodging in Piazza del Carmine. Rosa's grave is near those of other witnesses to the dawn of the Florentine Evangelical movement. LS

Archbishop. It grieves my heart, O unfortunate man! to find you reduced to this condition.

Francesco Madiai. Pity it is, my Lord, that so generous a heart should be grieved by any thing.

Archbishop. Spoken like a Christian! There are then some remains of faith and charity left within you!

Francesco Madiai. Of faith, my Lord, there are only the roots, such as have often penetrated ere now the prison-floor. Charity too is among those plants which, although they thrive best under the genial warmth of heaven, do not wither and weaken and died down deprived of air and sunshine. I might never had thought seriously of praying for my enemies, had it not been the will of a merciful and all-wise God to cast me into the middle of them.

Archbishop. From these, whom you rashly call enemies, you possess the power of delivering yourself. Confess your crime.

Francesco Madiai. I know the accusation; not the crime.

Archbishop. Disobedience to the doctrines of the Church.

Francesco Madiai. I am so ignorant, my Lord, as never to have known a tenth or twentieth part of its doctrines. But by God's grace I know and understand the few and simple ones which His blessed Son taught us.

Archbishop. Ignorant as you acknowledge yourself to be, do you presume that you are able to interpret them?

Francesco Madiai. No, my Lord. He has done that Himself, and intelligibly to all mankind.

Archbishop. By whose authority did you read and expound the Bible?

Francesco Madiai. By His.

Archbishop. By His? To thee?

Francesco Madiai. What he commanded the Apostles to do, and what they did, surely is no impiety.

Archbishop. It may be.

Francesco Madiai. Our Lord commanded His Apostles to go forth and preach the gospel to all nations.

Archbishop. Are you an Apostle, vain, foolish man?

Francesco Madiai. Alas! my Lord, how far, how very far, from the least of them! But surely I may follow where they lead; and I am more likely to follow them in the right road, if I listen to no directions from others far behind.

Archbishop. Go on, go on, self-willed creature! doomed to perdition.

Francesco Madiai. I have ventured to repeat the ordinances of Christ and the Apostles; no more. I have nothing to add, nothing to interpret.

Archbishop. I shall look into the matter; I doubt whether He ever gave them such an ordinance - I mean in such a sense - for I remember a passage that may lead astray the unwary. Any thing more?

Francesco Madiai. My Lord, there is also another.

Archbishop. What is that?

Francesco Madiai. "Seek truth, and ensue it".

Archbishop. There is only one who can tell us, of a surety, what truth is; namely, our Holy Father.

Francesco Madiai. Yes, my Lord, of this I am convinced.

Archbishop. Avow it then openly, and you are free at once.

Francesco Madiai. Openly, most openly, do I, and have I, and ever will I avow it. Permit me, my Lord Archbishop, to repeat the blessed words, which have fallen from your Lordship; "There is only one who can tell us of a certainty what truth is". - "our Holy Father", - our Father which is in Heaven.

Archbishop. Scoffer! heretic! infidel! No, I am not angry; not in the least: but I am hurt, wounded, wounded deeply. It becomes not me to hold a longer conference with one so obstinate and obdurate. A lower order in the priesthood has this duty to perform.

Francesco Madiai. My Lord, you have conferred, I must acknowledge, an unmerited distinction upon one so humble and so abject as I am. Well am I aware that men of a lower order are the more proper men to instruct me. They have taken that trouble with me and thousands more.

Archbishop. Indeed! indeed! so many? His Imperial Highness, well-informed, as we thought, of what passes in every house, from the cellar to the bed-chamber, had no intelligence or notion of this. Denounce the culpable, and merit his pardon, his protection, his favor. Do not beat your breast, but clear it. Give me at once the names of these teachers, these listeners; I will intercede in their behalf.

Francesco Madiai. The name of the first and highest was written on the cross in Calvary; poor fishermen were others on the sea of Galilee. I could not enumerate the listeners; but the foremost rest, some venerated, some forgotten, in the catacombs of Rome.

Archbishop. Francesco Madiai! there are yet remaining in you certain faint traces of the Church in her state of tribulation, of the blessed saints and martyrs in the catacombs. But, coming near home, Madiai, you have a wife, aged and infirm; would not you help her?

Francesco Madiai. God will; I am forbidden.

Archbishop. It is more profitable to strive than to sigh. I pity your distress; let me carry to her an order for her liberation.

Francesco Madiai. Your Lordship can.

Archbishop. Not without your signature.

Francesco Madiai. The cock may crow ten times, ten mornings, ten years before I deny my Christ. O wife of my early love, persevere, persevere.

Archbishop. This to me?

Francesco Madiai. No, my Lord! but to a martyr; from one unworthy of that glory; in the presence of Him who was merciful and found no mercy - my crucified Redeemer.

Archbishop. After much perseverance, I declare to you, with all the frankness of my character, there is no prospect of your liberation.

Francesco Madiai. Adieu, adieu, O Rosa! Light and enlivener of my earlier days, solace and support of my declining! We must now love God alone, from God alone hope succor. We are chastened but to heal our infirmities; we are separated but to meet inseparably. To the constant and resigned there is always an Angel that opens the prison-door; we wrong him when we call him Death.