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Pope Pius VII [1800-23]

Barnabas Louis Chiaramonti, son of Count Scipio Chiaramonti, was born August 14, 1740, and when sixteen years of age became a Benedictine monk. In due time he became an abbot in his order, and in 1785 he was made a member of the College of Cardinals by Pius VI., his relative. As cardinal he opposed the uncompromising attitude of the pope and the dominant faction in the Curia and expressed his hearty accord with the democratic aspirations of the Italian people. " Become out-and-out Christians," he said in a sermon (1797), "and you will also be thorough-going democrats." His attitude toward the Italian Republic (established by Napoleon in dependence orr France) was not quite consistent, but in general he gave his support to the new regime. At the death of Pius VI the conclave met at Venice on December 1, 1799. After months of delay he was unanimously elected to succeed Pius VI, whose papal name he adopted. Chiaramonti was declared his successor on March 14, 1800, and crowned on the 2ist of that month. The Napoleonic wars were still raging when he entered upon his office. Three months after his election Napoleon became master of Italy through his victory over the Austrians at Marengo. Encouraged by the intimation through Cardinal Martiniana of Napoleon's desire for the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in France, Pius appointed Caselli and Archbishop Spina to arrange a concordat with three nominees of Napoleon - Joseph Bonaparte, Cretet, and the Vendean priest Bernier. Difficulties having arisen, the aid of Consalvi was called in, and the concordat, signed at Paris on July 15th, was ratified by Pius on August 14, 1801.

The concordat with Napoleon involved the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church in France with a reduction of the episcopate from a hundred and fifty-eight to sixty, the resignation of all existing French bishops, the right of Napoleon as first consul to nominate bishops, the payment of the clergy out of the State treasury, a recognition of the obligation of obedience to the civil government, the renunciation on the part of the pope of all claim to the confiscated estates and valuables in France, the forgiveness of priests who had married during the revolution, and the control of public worship by a civil council. All of the higher clergy were obliged to take the oath of allegiance to the government and all appointments of parish clergy were subject to the approval of the government.

Most of the provisions of the "concordat" concluded in 1801 between the first consul Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII were still in force towards the end of the 19th Century. It may perhaps be said that France was the country where this church was the most powerful, at any rate, it had there its most perfect organization, and raised the largest sums of money; and it was to France that, directly or indirectly, the Holy See appealled in all its difficulties.

The value of the Concordat, however, from the pontifical point of view was considerably lessened by the "Articles Organiques" appended to it by the French Government on April 8, 1802. The pope's dissatisfaction with Napoleon's arbitrary and drastic methods did not prevent him from going to Paris to assist in the coronation of the first consul as emperor. In 1804 Napoleon opened negotiations to secure at the pope's hands his formal consecration as emperor. After some hesitation Pius was induced to perform the ceremony at Notre Dame and to extend his visit to Paris for four months. The refusal of the pope to annul the marriage of Jerome Buonaparte to Miss Patterson, of Baltimore, was a grievous offense to Napoleon, thwarting as it did a cherished plan for the formation of another advantageous alliance with a royal family.

Pius returned to Rome on May 16, 1805, with many expressions of good will; but in the October following the French troops, in evacuating the kingdom of Naples, suddenly occupied Ancona upon the alleged necessity of protecting the Holy See. Resistance by force was out of the question, but to a requisition from the emperor that all Sardinians, English, Russians, and Swedes should be expelled from the pontifical states, and that vessels of all nations at war with France should be excluded from his ports, Pius replied by asserting the independence and neutrality of his realm.

After negotiations had dragged on for two years, in the course of which the French occupied the chief Adriatic ports, Civita Vecchia was seized and the papal troops placed under French officers. On February 2, 1808, Rome itself was occupied by General Miollis; a month later the provinces of Ancona, Macerata, Fermo, and Urbino were united to the kingdom of Italy, and diplomatic relations between Napoleon and Rome were broken off; finally, by a decree issued from Vienna on May 17, 1809, the emperor declared the papal states reunited to France by resumption of the grant of Charlemagne.

Pius retaliated by a bull, drawn up by Fontana and dated June 10, 1809, excommunicating the invaders; and, to prevent insurrection, Miollis - either on his own responsibility, as Napoleon afterward asserted, or by order of the latter - employed General Radet to take possession of the pope's person. The palace on the Quirinal was broken open during the night of July 5th, and, on the persistent refusal of Pius to renounce his temporal authority, he was carried off, first to Grenoble, thence after an interval to Savona, and in June, 1812, to Fontainebleau. There he was induced, on January 25, 1813, to sign a new concordat, which was published as an imperial decree on February 13th.

On conference with the cardinals, however, Pius withdrew his concessions and proposed a concordat upon a new basis. At first no attention was paid to this, and, when after the French armies were driven from Germany Napoleon endeavored to purchase a new concordat by offering to restore the papal possessions south of the Apennines. Pius refused to treat with him from any place other than Rome. The order for his departure thither reached him on January 22, 1814, and after a brief delay at Cesena he entered Rome on May 24, 1814.

The year 1814 marks the most important turning-point in the history of the nineteenth century. It saw Napoleon conquered and banished, the Bourbons returned in the person of Louis XVIII, and the Congress of Vienna, consisting of the plenipotentiaries of the various states, convened in order to rectify the much-disturbed map of Europe. The era of revolution was over and the era of legitimacy and reaction began. The restoration of the Papacy stood at the threshold of a new epoch, and marked a new departure in the history of that ancient institution. The after-development of Catholicism, and hardly less of Protestantism, even that of the state and of civilisation, was led into new channels by this departure. The pope had returned after but a few years' absence. What made the difference between this return and the many similar occurrences of the Middle Ages, so that the after-effects of this return surpass even those of the return from the exile at Avignon? This question forces itself upon us, and is easily answered. For the cause which gave so widespread a significance to this single fact was the well-known reactionary tendency which sprang from the Revolution and dominated the entire following period.

With his states restored to him by the congress of Vienna and freed from the Napoleonic terror, he devoted the remainder of his life to social and ecclesiastic reform in accordance with the modern spirit. The foreign policy of the papacy in the early 19th Century was supremely successful. From 1814 to 1830 Europe witnessed the restoration of legitimate monarchy. The once exiled dynasties conscientiously re-established the legitimate Church, and both conservative powers made common cause against revolutionary tendencies. Throughout Europe the governing classes regarded this "union of throne and altar" as axiomatic. For the pope, as eldest legitimate sovereign and protagonist against the Revolution, Rome obtained from the Congress of Vienna the restitution of the States of the Church in practically their full extent.

In August, 1814, feeling keenly the need of its aid in restoring the church to its former dignity and influence, Pius VII reestablished the Jesuit society which had so well maintained its organization and discipline that it was ready at once to enter upon the task of rehabilitating and directing the policy of the Roman Catholic Church. Under its influence the pope issued (1816) a Bull declaring Bible societies "a fiendish instrument for the undermining of the foundation of religion."

By concluding concordats with all the important Catholic powers save Austria he made it possible to crush Jansenism, Febronianism and Gallicanism. By bulls of circumscription, issued after consultation with various Protestant states of Germany, he rearranged their Catholic dioceses and readjusted ecclesiastical incomes. By unfailing tact he gained the good will of Great Britain, where before him no cardinal had set foot for two centuries, and secured that friendly understanding between the British government and the Vatican which since proved so valuable to Rome.

The policy of this pope was to a very large extent shaped by Cardinal Consalvi, who amid all the intrigues and disasters of the revolutionary period had been unswerving in his maintenance of the rights of the papacy. He was of noble parentage (b. 1757) and had been educated by the ex-Jesuit, Zaccaria, in a school which enjoyed the patronage of Pius VI. From beginning to end Consalvi was the soul of the administration of Pius VII. He was declared by a Roman contemporary to be "a worthy successor of the political geniuses in the Roman court, who had been half swans and half foxes." It was further said of him, " if one would escape his sagacity it was not enough to keep silent, but it was necessary to avoid thinking in his presence."

His thigh having been broken by a fall in July, 1823, acute inflammation supervened, and he died on August 2oth in that year. His successor Leo XII (1823-1829) continued this policy and secured further advantageous concordats.