To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII

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The most forgotten aspect of 1811 was the brief re-emergence of parlementaire Gallicanism. The council of state appointed a special commission of experts to explore legal remedies and apply pressure on the episcopate to solve the investiture crisis. It was presided over by Régnier, as minister of justice, and included some of the most famous jurists of the empire: Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, Bigot, Michel Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély and Achille Libéral Treilhard. Footnote 87 Many of these men had been close to the Jansenist avocats of the parlement of Paris who had resisted the papal bull Unigenitus with great vigour throughout the eighteenth century. Footnote 88 From this older generation of lawyers they had inherited a disdain for any intrusion by Rome into French affairs. They were eager to protect Gallicanism from papal interference. In this goal they had a keen ally in the Voltairian, and anti-clerical minister of police, Anne Jean Savary duc de Rovigo. Footnote 89 He had been a key figure in the repression of secret networks of Ultramontane clergy, and had overseen the interrogation and arrests of the three bishops who had challenged the emperor's intentions during the concile. In many ways these men were the ideologues of Napoleon's ‘War against God’. In France, the situation was further reinforced by centuries of powerful localist traditions. Gallicanism, or the notion that the Church in France was autonomous and that its bishops in council shared spiritual authority with the pope, was a powerful legacy, which, although increasingly beleaguered, strongly influenced clerical thinking throughout the nineteenth century. The well-informed reminded the public that the decrees of the Council of Trent had never been ratified fully in France. Footnote 28 The most concrete expression of this ecclesiological position can be observed in Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's famous four articles of the declaration of 1682. Footnote 29 Essentially the French monarchy, and its Church, claimed administrative independence and immunity from excommunication. Bossuet's declaration was registered by the council of state after the annexation of Rome in 1809, and was made a mandatory part of the curriculum in seminaries throughout the French Empire. Footnote 30 The pope was made a prisoner of Napoleon and spent much of his imprisonment in Savona. Later, after Napoleon seized the Papal States, he brought the pope to Fontainebleau near Paris. That seizure in 1809 was meant to further break the pope’s spirit, the author argues. Desperately, Radet took an axe to the front door, somewhat compromising any vestigial element of surprise in his attempt to take the Sovereign Pontiff into Imperial custody. By the time he arrived in the pope’s study, he was looking decidedly sweaty and dishevelled. Radet succeeded, none the less, in initiating an extended papal captivity with profound implications for the Holy See and European politics.

Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII. By Ambrogio A. Caiani To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII. By Ambrogio A. Caiani

You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.Riveting. . . . An important and wonderfully written book.”—Francis P. Sempa, New York Journal of Books A groundbreaking account of Napoleon Bonaparte, Pope Pius VII, and the kidnapping that would forever divide church and state Despite these tribulations, Pius steadfastly refused to concede his power to appoint bishops to Napoleon. One of the most important contributions of this book to scholarship on Napoleon is its examination of the wider implications of Pius’s stand. It set the Catholic Church across Europe in opposition to the imperial regime and ignited the first major civil resistance to its rule. In this respect, it was the initial stage in the disintegration of the Napoleonic empire, and it set a powerful precedent. In July 1811 a national council of the Church summoned by Napoleon to confirm his usurpation of Pius’s powers refused to do so; two years later France’s legislative body followed suit, denounced the emperor’s warmongering and demanded he negotiate peace with his enemies. Ultimately, Napoleon lost his throne thanks less to military defeat (his opponents were prepared to negotiate with him almost until the end) than to his infallible ability to alienate his natural allies. Despite the obvious mutual advantages of this arrangement, relations between Pius and Napoleon soured rapidly. Napoleon’s importunate demands for the annulment of his marriage to Josephine echoed Henry VIII’s two centuries earlier. Increasingly, it became evident that Imperial territorial ambitions in Italy were a threat not only to external papal dependencies, but the Papal States and even the Eternal City itself. In Napoleonic Europe, there would be no room for the temporal autonomy that the papacy saw as the precondition for spiritual independence. To Kidnap a Pope is a scholarly monograph that reads like a thriller; and is a work of narrative history which ably threads ideas into the heart of its presentation. It is also a timely reminder of the dangers that ecclesiastical leaders face when they seek to “ride the tiger” of contemporary power politics for transient institutional gain.

Pope | napoleonicwars To Kidnap a Pope | napoleonicwars

Fabian Perssonafter completing his doctoral thesis Servants of Fortune in Lund, Fabian Persson is now a Lecturer and Associate Professor in History at Linnaeus University in Sweden. Two recent books are Women at the Early Modern Swedish Court: Power, Risk, and Opportunity (Amsterdam University Press 2021) and Survival and Revival. Sweden's Court and Monarchy, 1718 to 1930 (Palgrave Macmillan 2020). Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? On 25 July Bigot tallied votes for and against. To his satisfaction eighty-five bishops were favourable, while thirteen still opposed the decree. Footnote 99 Ten days later, the concile was reconvened for a pre-orchestrated final general congregation in which nothing was left to chance. Footnote 100 During the closing session, Bigot and Bovara steered the bishops successfully towards a formal ratification of the decree. The imperial government had achieved its objective, yet it could not hide the fact that the concile’s favourable verdict was the outcome of physical coercion and psychological intimidation. The enlarged deputation mandated by the decrees comprised the usual storm-troopers of Gallicanism and was expanded to include Cardinals Aurelio Roverella, Fabrizio Ruffo, Alphonse de Bayanne and Antonio Dugnani who headed for Savona. Footnote 101 They would negotiate with the pope from September until January 1812. Footnote 102 To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account.On 5 July Fesch travelled to Saint Cloud to give the emperor news of this significant reverse. Footnote 80 The neo-conciliarist solution, instead of rallying and resurrecting the Gallican Church on the contrary emphasised the strength of Ultramontane feeling. The emperor expressed his dissatisfaction and threatened to arrest any metropolitan archbishop who would not bestow canonical investiture on an imperial candidate. Footnote 81 A last ditch attempt was made to save the situation and Napoleon dictated a draft set of decrees to be approved by the bishops. The papacy's refusal to negotiate, let alone invest new bishops, left only one solution open to the imperial administration: namely a recourse to neo-conciliarist measures. Simply put, the French Empire resurrected the late medieval notion that church councils could circumvent papal supremacy. Many historians have seen this process as a cynical exercise by Napoleon to force his will on the Catholic Church. While there is some truth in this assessment, it can rather be argued that the appeal to conciliarism was not entirely misguided. Through this expedient, the Empire sought to appeal to older members of the Catholic hierarchy in France who had lived through the twilight years of Gallicanism and Jansenist controversies over ecclesiology during the second half of the eighteenth century. Footnote 21 Historians of conciliarism have focused on Jansenism and Febronianism and have disregarded its swansong during the early nineteenth century. For example, Francis Oakley's brilliant The conciliarist tradition passes over the events of 1811 in complete silence. Footnote 22 This article contends that neo-conciliarist thinking, even if clumsily articulated, was central to the concile. Napoleon reached center stage following the Coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799. Once in power, Napoleon sought to ameliorate the effects of the French civil war. Those who supported the revolution pitted themselves against both royalist and Catholic forces in the Vendée wars, a series of farmer and peasant uprisings partly over the right to practice the Catholic faith. Napoleon sympathized with the peasants in the Vendée region and sought to reconcile the principles of the French Revolution with the Catholic Church. Ambrogio has published his research in several journals including The Historical Journal, English Historical Review, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, French History, European History Quarterly and International History Review. Teaching

Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII by Ambrogio A Caiani To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII by Ambrogio A Caiani

The most unintended outcome of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic decades was the strengthening of the papacy and its Ultramontane ideology. Of all the forces that resisted French ‘cultural imperialism’ the most successful and relentless in its refusal to acquiesce was the Church of Rome. This phenomenon, which Michael Broers has called the ‘War against God’, reached a significant crisis point in 1811. Footnote 1 On the surface it seemed as if the Napoleonic behemoth had conquered Europe and now commanded universal obedience. Yet the behaviour of the clergy in the French imperium betrayed just how much dissent and anger lurked beneath apparently placid waters. Empire and Religion did not operate in harmony and conflicts over ultimate control of the Church were the norm.Caiani leads the reader expertly through diplomatic and theological disputes, a dynastic marriage, international relations and war. He handles this complex narrative deftly, without too much assumption of prior knowledge.”—David Laven , Times Literary Supplement

Losing a Kingdom, Gaining the World: The Catholic Church in

The commission lamented the fact that modern legal codes made no provision for the old legal instrument of the appel comme d'abus. Footnote 91 Under this procedure, during the ancien régime, appeals against ecclesiastical decisions could be brought to secular courts of appeal, like the old parlements. Here, clerical rulings or actions could be overturned. This instrument was used against clergy who exceeded the boundaries of their jurisdiction and intruded into the realms of the secular. The commission proposed its reintegration into imperial law and thus gave judges a potent weapon against rogue archbishops. Their suggestion that parlementaire Gallicanism be resurrected was decidedly unexpected. Régnier argued that articles six and seven of the organic laws of the Concordat (which the papacy had never accepted) had allowed for allegations of clerical abuse of power to be judged by the council of state. Footnote 92 They advised that the emperor could transfer the council's jurisdiction over the clergy to the imperial courts of justice. Thus, metropolitans refusing to invest candidates could be tried through an appel comme d'abus as criminally negligent in the exercise of their duties and indicted accordingly. Footnote 93 Imperial prosecutors anywhere in the empire could thus pursue any metropolitan who did not invest nominees. It was a safe assumption that Savary's police force would vigorously enforce this anti-clerical legislation. In gripping, vivid prose, Caiani brings to life the struggle for power that would shape modern Europe. It all makes for a historical read which is both original and enjoyable.”—Antonia Fraser, author of Marie Antoinette Throughout this crisis the papacy responded in time-honoured fashion by refusing to collaborate with hostile forces. Its ultimate displeasure was made manifest when the emperor and his administration were excommunicated. Footnote 16 Thus the road was opened for mass civil disobedience. Footnote 17 The Concordat of 1801, like that of Bologna in 1516, had recognised the monarch's right to appoint bishops to vacant dioceses. Footnote 18 Throughout the years from 1808 to 1814 no papal bulls were issued to confirm imperial nominees. A new investiture crisis, reminiscent of the struggle that had pitted Henry iv against Gregory vii in the eleventh century, was building. Footnote 19 By 1811 the Church faced one of its worst crises since the great medieval schism which had straddled the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Footnote 20 Try Ambrogio A. Caiani’s To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII...It is the story of the struggle, fought with cunning, not force, between the forgotten Roman nobleman Barnaba Chiaramonti, who became Pope Pius VII, and the all-too-well-remembered Napoleon.”—Jonathan Sumption, Spectator ‘Books of the Year’ The French state would gain thereby the strength that came from social cohesion in the religious sphere and the right to nominate bishops for papal approval. Conversely, by being given a state-sponsored hand in the work of ecclesial reconstruction, the papacy saw an opening for undermining the traditionally problematic autonomy of the Gallican Church in relation to Rome.Lesser men would have found reconciliation impossible, but Napoleon had a respectful, if unorthodox, view of religion. Napoleon boldly committed himself to reconciliation with the church — on his terms. Napoleon would tap Etienne-Alexandre Bernier, a former royalist rebel, as his chief negotiator with the papacy in historic negotiations. We can now see clearly that industrialisation, secularism and the emergent nation-state spelt not the end of religious faith, but rather its transformation into a political force in its own right... But it was the Catholic church and its response to the French Revolution that paved the way. To Kidnap a Pope tells the story of this epic struggle." —Mark Mazower, Financial Times "Caiani leads the reader expertly through diplomatic and theological disputes, a dynastic marriage, international relations and war. He handles this complex narrative deftly, without too much assumption of prior knowledge." —David Laven , Times Literary Supplement 'Ambrogio A. Caiani tells the story of Napoleon's second papal hostage-taking: an audacious 1809 plot to whisk Pius VII (1742–1823) from Rome in the dead of night and to break his stubborn resolve through physical isolation and intrusive surveillance... Caiani's unique contribution in this work is to have set aside traditional, partisan tellings of this tale as good versus evil, secular versus religious, or state versus church. Instead, this version, even-handed and detailed in its contextualisation, is about two charismatic leaders going mano a mano." —Miles Pattenden, Australian Book Review "In this enthralling study, Ambrogio Caiani gives a vivid account of the struggle between the two men, which would continue virtually unabated until Napoleon's death on St Helena in 1821. He is commendably even-handed in his analysis, presenting it both as a personal tussle between two dogged opponents and as a clash between contrasting visions of the world: a Catholicism ever more drawn to counter-revolutionary reaction, and an emperor consciously pursuing his own brand of modernity." —Alan Forrest, BBC History Magazine "Riveting. . . . An important and wonderfully written book." —Francis P. Sempa, New York Journal of Books The imperial government had expected that the threat of a concile national meeting in Paris would induce the pope to make concessions. In April 1811 all the bishops of the French empire, of the kingdom of Italy and Karl Theodor von Dalberg, prince-primate of Regensburg, were summoned to Paris. Footnote 56 The intention was that an assembly of the bishops of the imperial Church could circumvent papal authority and sanction canonical investiture by metropolitan archbishops (or in their absence the senior bishop of the province). Although superficially simple, this plan rapidly ran into difficulties. The three deputy bishops returned from Savona with a note, dated 19 May, which they claimed had the pope's sanction. Footnote 57 It comprised four articles which accepted the metropolitans’ right to invest new bishops within six months of nomination. Within forty-eight hours, the pope's conscience caused him to disavow the note and retracted the last two articles. From a legal standpoint, the note was unsigned and thus valueless. Ambrogio Caiani has undertaken a serious reassessment of Pius VII’s kidnapping and imprisonment, an important episode in the nineteenth-century history of the papacy that was last examined by E.E.Y. Hales in 1962. Caiani provides us with a careful, detailed account of the turbulent relationship between the Pope and Napoleon, using new archival material which he unearthed in Italy, France and Britain….This very readable and vivid account of the relationship between Pius VII and Napoleon is truly a work of fine scholarship."—John Pollard, The Tablet Napoleon was surprised about the pope’s intransigence, as both Protestants and Jews had agreed to abide by Napoleon’s vision, which placed the state at the center of things. Indeed, under Napoleon, many of the deprivations Jews had faced were abolished, and Jews across Italy were permitted to leave the ghettos.