Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 07.djvu/331

LEFT PIUS 265 PIZARRO and Cardinal Ferretti was elected to the papacy under the name of Pius IX., June 16. The new Pope at first acquired much popularity by favoring the hopes and wishes of the people for the reform of the abuses of the government. But the French Revolution of 1848 gave a much more powerful impulse to the enthusiasm, not only of the Italian pa- triots, but of the friends of liberal in- stitutions all over Europe. These sweep- ing changes the Pope was not prepared to support, and from that moment his popularity began to decline. The popu- lar disaffection was greatly increased on his taking for his minister Count Rossi, one of the most aristocratic and unpopular men in Rome. Count Rossi was assassinated Nov. 15, and Pius him- self, a few days later, escaped from Rome in disguise, and arrived safely in Gaeta in the Neapolitan territory. He sent to Rome an ordonnance, I ov. 27, de- claring void all the acts of the govern- ment, which he superseded by a state commission. This document the Roman chambers treated with contempt, ap- pointed a provisional government, and set about improving the victory they had achieved. The Pope remained nearly a year and a half at Gaeta and Portici, an object of sympathy as the head of the Roman Catholic Church. During his absence, Rome, which was in the possession of the native troops under Garibaldi, was besieged, and at last tak- en by storm by the French army under General Oudinot. The Pope left Portici, April 4, 1850, escorted by Neapolitan and French dragoons, accompanied by the king of Naples, and re-entered Rome April 12, amid the thunder of French cannon. His chief ecclesiastical acts are the formal definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in December, 1854; the famous encycli- cal of December, 1844, which was pro- voked by the Franco-Italian convention, providing for the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome — an act which was, however, practically annulled by the return of the French forces in 1867, in consequence of an attempt at invasion by Garibaldi; and the bull summoning the Ecumenical Council of 1869-1870, which promulgated the doctrine of papal infallibility. In September, 1870, the French troops were withdrawn from Rome, and in October the States of the Church were annexed to the kingdom of Italy, thus ending the temporal power of the Popes. He died Feb. 7, 1878. Pius X. Cardinal Giussepe Sarto, Pa- triarch of Venice, was chosen by the Pa- pal Conclave to succeed Leo XIII., Aug. 4, 1903. The election was universally approved, and on Aug. 9, the Patriarch was crowned at St. Peter's assuming the title Pius X. He was born in Italy in 1835, of peasant family. Priest, 1858; bishop, 1866; cardinal, 1893. In 1907 in his encyclical he inveighed against "modernism." He raised a great sum of money for the victims of the POPE PIUS X. earthquake in that year. In 1910 he issued a decree debarring the clergy from engaging in the administration of social organizations. He died in 1914. PIZARRO, FRANCISCO, a Spanish explorer, the conqueror of Peru; the illegitimate son of a gentleman of Trux- illa, being left entirely dependent on his mother, a peasant girl, he received no education. He embarked in 1510, with some other adventurers, for America; and, in 1524, after having distinguished himself under Nuriez de Balboa on many occasions, he associated at Panama with Diego de Almagro and Hernandez Luque, a priest, in an enterprise to make fresh discoveries. In this voyage they reached the coast of Peru, but being too few to make any attempt at a settlement, Pizarro returned to Spain, where all that he gained was power from the court to prosecute his object. However, having raised some money, he was en- abled again, in 1531, to visit Peru, where a civil war was then raging between Huascar, the legitimate monarch, and