The papal conclave that followed the death of Pius VI on 29 August 1799 lasted from 30 November 1799 to 14 March 1800 and led to the selection of Cardinal Barnaba Chiaramonti, who took the name Pius VII. This conclave was held in Venice and was the last to take place outside Rome. This period was marked by uncertainty for the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church following the invasion of the Papal States and abduction of Pius VI under the French Directory.
Pius VI's reign had been marked by tension between his authority and that of the European monarchs and other institutions, both secular and ecclesiastical. This was largely due to his moderate liberal and reforming pretences. At the beginning of his pontificate he promised to continue the work of his predecessor, Clement XIV, in whose 1773 briefDominus ac Redemptor the dissolution of the Society of Jesus was announced. Pro-Jesuit powers remained in support of Pius, thinking him secretly more inclined to the Society than Clement. The Archduchy of Austria proved a threat when its ruler, Emperor Joseph II, made internal reforms which conflicted with some of the power of the Papacy. Further, German archbishops had shown independence at the 1786 Congress of Ems, but were soon brought into line.
At the outbreak of the French Revolution Pius was compelled to see the independent Gallican Church suppressed, the pontifical and ecclesiastical possessions in France confiscated, and an effigy of himself burnt by the populace at the Palais Royal. The murder of the republican agent Hugo Basseville in the streets of Rome (January 1793) gave new ground of offence; the papal court was charged with complicity by the French Convention, and Pius threw in his lot with the First Coalition against the French First Republic.
The State of the See
Napoleon Bonaparte
In 1796 Napoléon Bonaparte invaded the Italian Peninsula, defeated the papal troops and occupied Ancona and Loreto. He did not continue and conquer Rome, as the French Directory ordered, being aware that this would not win favour among the French and Italian populations. Pius sued for peace, which was granted at Tolentino on 19 February 1797. The Treaty of Tolentino transferred Romagna to Bonaparte's newly formed Cispadane Republic (founded in December 1796 out of a merger of Reggio, Modena, Bologna and Ferrara) in a hope that the French would not further pursue the Papal lands. Several reforms were made in the French-controlled regions, where much property of the Church was confiscated.
On 28 December 1797, in a riot created by some Italian and French revolutionists, the French general Mathurin-Léonard Duphot of the French embassy was killed and a new pretext furnished for invasion.
Louis Alexandre Berthier marched to Rome, entered it unopposed on 13 February 1798, and, proclaiming a Roman Republic, demanded of the pope the renunciation of his temporal authority. His actions were at the direction of the French Government, at that time the Directory. Pius refused and was taken prisoner. On 20 February he was escorted from the Vatican to Siena, and thence to the Certosa near Florence. The French declaration of war against Grand Duke Ferdinand III of Tuscany led to Pius' removal, though by this time deathly ill, by way of Parma, Piacenza, Turin and Grenoble to the citadel of Valence, where he died six weeks later, on 29 August 1799. Napoleon was not directly involved. He was in the Near East, and did not return to France until November 1799, when he conducted the coup-d'état of 9 November (18 Brumaire).
The Conclave
With the loss of the Vatican and the pope's other temporal power, the cardinals were left in a remarkable position. All had been expelled from the city of Rome by the French occupying authorities. They were forced to hold the conclave in Venice. This followed an ordinance issued by Pius VI in 1798, which established that when a conclave could not be held in Rome it would be held in the city with the greatest number of cardinals.
The BenedictineSan Giorgio Monastery in Venice was chosen as the location for the conclave, and the voting would be held in its night chapel. The city, along with other northern Italian lands, was held by the Archduchy of Austria, whose ruler Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, agreed to defray the costs of the conclave. Since the Secretary of the College of Cardinals was unable to leave Rome to attend, the cardinals elected, in an almost unanimous vote, Msgr. Ercole Consalvi as Secretary in his place. Consalvi would prove an influential figure in the election.[citation needed]
San Giorgio, Venice: location of the conclave
The conclave began on 30 November 1799 and the assembled cardinals could not overcome a stalemate between Bellisomi and Mattei until March 1800. Thirty-four Cardinals were present at the start, with the late appearance in conclave on 10 December of Cardinal Franziskus Herzan von Harras, who was also the imperial plenipotentiary of Francis II. He bore the Imperial commands, the first of which was to get Cardinal Alessandro Mattei elected Pope. Strangely, by 28 December 1799 Cardinal Herzan had not yet presented his credentials as Imperial plenipotentiary to the College of Cardinals, and thus had no special status.[1]
Cardinal Carlo Bellisomi, the Bishop of Cesena, seemed a viable candidate (papabile), with some eighteen committed votes. His unpopularity among the Austrian faction, however, who preferred Cardinal Alessandro Mattei, the archbishop of Ferrara, subjected Bellisomi to the "virtual veto", since the Mattei faction had sufficient numbers to deny Bellisomi a canonically required two-thirds vote.[2]
The conclave considered a third possible candidate, Cardinal Hyacinthe Sigismond GerdilCRSP but Austria had rejected him from before the beginning of the Conclave as too old—he was eighty-two. As the conclave was in the third month Cardinal Maury, who supported neither Bellisomi nor Mattei, suggested Gregorio Barnaba Chiaramonti, OSB Cassin., the Bishop of Imola.
In the middle of February, both Herzan and Maury independently calculated that Chiaramonti had about twelve supporters. On 11 March a frank, private conversation took place between Cardinal Antonelli and Cardinal Herzan, in which each frankly admitted that the candidacies of Calcagni, Bellisomi, Gerdil, Mattei, and Valenti were failures. During the conversation Cardinal Dugnani appeared and suggested that Chiaramonti might be considered; numbers of supporters of Mattei were willing to go over to him. On 12 March the Spanish agent, Cardinal Francisco Lorenzana, received news from Madrid that he had permission to formally exclude Cardinal Mattei. It was unnecessary to do so, of course, since Bellisomi's supporters had already given him the virtual veto. On 14 March, with the support of the active and influential Conclave secretary Consalvi, Cardinal Chiaramonti was elected.
Chiaramonti was, at the time, the bishop of Imola in the Subalpine Republic. He had stayed in place after the assumption of his diocese by Bonaparte's army in 1797 and famously made a speech in which he stated that good Christians could make good democrats, a speech described as "Jacobin" by Bonaparte himself. Though he could not save ecclesiastical reform and confiscation under the new rule, he did prevent the church being dissolved, unlike that in France.
Due to its temporary siting in Venice, the papal coronation was hurried. Having no papal treasures on hand the noblewomen of the city manufactured the famous papier-mâché papal tiara. It was adorned with their own jewels. Chiaramonti was declared Pope Pius VII and crowned on 21 March at the monastery church of S. Giorgio.
By the Battle of Marengo on 14 June 1800 the French regained Northern Italy from the forces of Austria. Following this promotion[clarification needed], Bonaparte decided to recognise the new pope and restored the Papal States to those borders set out at Tolentino.
The new pope headed for Rome, which he entered to the pleasure of the population on 3 July. Fearing further invasion he decreed the Papal States should remain neutral between Napoleonic Italy in the north and the Kingdom of Naples in the south. At the time the latter was ruled by Ferdinand IV, a member of the House of Bourbon.
Ercole Consalvi, the secretary of the conclave, was created a cardinal on 11 August and became the secretary of state of His Holiness. On 15 July France officially re-recognised Catholicism as its majority (not state) religion in the Concordat of 1801, and the Church was granted a measure of freedom with a Gallician constitution of the clergy. The Concordat further recognised the Papal States and that which it had confiscated and sold during the occupation of the area. In 1803 the reinstatement of the Papal States was made official by the Treaty of Lunéville.
Napoleon pursued secularisation of smaller, independent lands and, through diplomatic pressure, the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire (1806). The relations between the Church and the First French Empire declined following the pope's refusal to divorce Jérôme Bonaparte and Elizabeth Patterson in 1805. The newly crowned emperor of the French restarted his expansionist policies and assumed control over Ancona, Naples (following the Battle of Austerlitz, installing his brother Joseph Bonaparte as its new king), Pontecorvo and Benevento. The changes angered the pope, and following his refusal to accept them, Napoleon, in February 1808, demanded he subsidise France's military conflict with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The pope again refused, leading to further confiscations of territory such as Urbino, Ancona and Macerata. Finally in 1809, on 17 May, the Papal states were formally annexed to the First French Empire and Pius VII was taken to the Château de Fontainebleau.
Pope Pius VI was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 15 February 1775 to his death in August 1799.
Pope Pius VII was head of the Catholic Church from 14 March 1800 to his death in August 1823. He ruled the Papal States from June 1800 to 17 May 1809 and again from 1814 to his death. Chiaramonti was also a monk of the Order of Saint Benedict in addition to being a well-known theologian and bishop.
Pope Pius VIII was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 31 March 1829 to his death in November 1830.
The Concordat of 1801 was an agreement between the First French Republic and the Holy See, signed by First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII on 15 July 1801 in Paris. It remained in effect until 1905, except in Alsace–Lorraine, where it remains in force. It sought national reconciliation between the French Revolution and Catholics and solidified the Roman Catholic Church as the majority church of France, with most of its civil status restored. This resolved the hostility of devout French Catholics against the revolutionary state. It did not restore the vast Church lands and endowments that had been seized during the Revolution and sold off. Catholic clergy returned from exile, or from hiding, and resumed their traditional positions in their traditional churches. Very few parishes continued to employ the priests who had accepted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of the revolutionary regime. While the Concordat restored much power to the papacy, the balance of church-state relations tilted firmly in Bonaparte's favour. He selected the bishops and supervised church finances.
Papabile is an unofficial Italian term first coined by Vaticanologists and now used internationally in many languages to describe a Catholic man, in practice always a cardinal, who is thought a likely or possible candidate to be elected pope.
Jean-Sifrein Maury was a French cardinal, archbishop of Paris, and former bishop of Montefiascone.
Ercole Consalvi was a deacon and cardinal of the Catholic Church, who served twice as Cardinal Secretary of State for the Papal States and who played a crucial role in the post-Napoleonic reassertion of the legitimist principle of the divine right of kings, of which he was a constant supporter.
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The papal conclave held from 2 to 28 September 1823 ended with the election of Annibale della Genga to succeed the death recently deceased Pius VII as pope. Della Genga took the name Leo XII.
Giovanni Battista Caprara Montecuccoli was an Italian statesman and cardinal and archbishop of Milan from 1802 to 1810. As a papal diplomat he served in the embassies in Cologne, Lausanne, and Vienna. As Legate of Pius VII in France, he implemented the Concordat of 1801, and negotiated with the Emperor Napoleon over the matter of appointments to the restored hierarchy in France. He crowned Napoleon as King of Italy in Milan in 1805.
Bartolomeo Pacca was an Italian cardinal, scholar, and statesman as Cardinal Secretary of State. Pacca served as apostolic nuncio to Cologne, and later to Lisbon.
The Diocese of Imola is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in Romagna, northern Italy. It is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Bologna. The diocese had originally been a suffragan of the metropolitan of Milan, and was then subject to the Archbishop of Ravenna until 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII made Bologna an archbishopric and assigned it two suffragans, Imola and Cervia. In 1604, however, Pope Clement VIII returned them to the metropolitanate of Ravenna. Pope Pius VII transferred Imola back to the metropolitanate of Bologna.
Carlo Odescalchi, was an Italian prince and priest, Archbishop of Ferrara, cardinal of the Catholic Church and Vicar General of the Diocese of Rome. For years a close collaborator of popes Pius VII and Gregory XVI, in 1838 he renounced his titles in order to become a Jesuit.
Hyacinthe Sigismond Gerdil, CRSP was an Italian theologian, bishop and cardinal, who was a significant figure in the response of the papacy to the assault on the Catholic Church by the upheavals caused by the French Revolution.
The relationship between Napoleon and the Catholic Church was an important aspect of his rule.
Antonio Lamberto Rusconi, J.U.D. was an Italian cardinal who served as bishop of Imola.
Luigi Lambruschini was an Italian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church in the mid nineteenth century. He was a member of the Clerics Regular of St. Paul and served in the diplomatic corps of the Holy See.
Franziskus von Paula Herzan von Harras or František de Paula Hrzán z Harasova was a Roman Catholic cardinal from what is now the Czech Republic.
Pope Pius VI created 73 cardinals in 23 consistories.
Francesco Bertazzoli was an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church who was a longtime confidant of Pope Pius VII, who made him a cardinal in 1823.
References
↑ Ricard, Memoires ... Maury I, p. 286; Duerm, 61-62
↑ C. A. Ricard, Correspondence diplomatique et mémoires inédits du Cardinal Maury I (Lille, 1891), 227-228. Charles Duerm, Un peu plus de lumiere sur le Conclave de Venise et sur les commencements du Pontificat de Pie VII. 1799-1800 (Louvain 1896), 84.
R. Obechea, El Cardinel Lorenzana en el conclave de Venezia (1975). (in Spanish)
Alberto Lumbroso, Ricordi e documenti sul Conclave di Venezia (1800) (Roma: Fratelli Bocca 1903). (in Italian)
Charles van Duerm, SJ, Un peu plus de lumière sur le Conclave de Venise et sur les commencements du Pontificat de Pie VII. 1799-1800 (Louvain: Ch. Peeters 1896). (in French)
Eugenio Cipolletta, Memorie politiche sui conclavi da Pio VII a Pio IX (Milano 1863). (in Italian)
Mémoires du Cardinal Consalvi (ed. J. Crétineau-Joly) seconde édition (Paris: Plon 1866), 217–288. (in French)
Charles Antoine Ricard (editor), Correspondence diplomatique et mémoires inédits du Cardinal Maury (1792-1817) (Lille 1891) I, 264–379. (in French)
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