- Papal conclave, 1799–1800
The Papal conclave of 1799-1800 followed the death of
Pope Pius VI on29 August 1799 and led to the selection aspope of Giorgio Barnaba Luigi Chiaramonti, who took the name Pius VII, on14 March 1800 . The conclave, the last conclave to take place outsideRome , was held inVenice . This period was marked by uncertainty for the Pope and theRoman Catholic Church following the invasion of thePapal States and abduction of Pius VI under theFrench Directory .Historical context
Pope Pius VI
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,
Pope Clement XIV , in whose 1773 bull "Dominus ac redemptor ", the dissolution of the Jesuits was announced. Pro-Jesuit powers remained in support of Pius, thinking him secretly more inclined to the Society than Clement. TheArchduchy 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, Germanarchbishop s had shown independence at the 1786Congress of Ems , but were soon brought into line.At the outbreak of the
French Revolution Pius was compelled to see the independentGallican Church suppressed, the pontifical and ecclesiastical possessions in France confiscated and an effigy of himself burnt by the populace at thePalais Royal . The murder of the republican agentHugo Basseville in the streets of Rome (January1793 ) gave new ground of offence; the papal court was charged with complicity by theFrench Convention , and Pius threw in his lot with theFirst Coalition against theFrench First Republic .The State of the See
In
1796 Napoléon Bonaparte invaded theItalian Peninsula , defeated the papal troops and occupiedAncona andLoreto . He did not continue and conquer Rome, as theFrench Directory ordered, being aware that this would not win favour among the French and Italian populations. Pius sued for peace, which was granted atTolentino on19 February 1797 . TheTreaty of Tolentino transferredRomagna to Bonaparte's newly formedCispadane Republic (founded in December1796 out of a merger ofReggio ,Modena ,Bologna andFerrara ) 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.Several factors led to the complete occupation of Rome by the French. Firstly, the entrance of the Russian army into
Northern Italy pushed the French back. Secondly, onDecember 28 1797 , in a riot created by some Italian and French revolutionists, the French generalMathurin-Léonard Duphot of the French embassy was killed and a new pretext furnished for invasion.Louis Alexandre Berthier marched to Rome, entered it unopposed on13 February 1798 , and, proclaiming a Roman Republic, demanded of the pope the renunciation of his temporal authority. Upon his refusal he was taken prisoner, and onFebruary 20 was escorted from the Vatican toSiena , and thence to the Certosa near Florence. The French declaration of war againstFerdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany led to Pius' removal, though by this time deathly ill, by way ofParma ,Piacenza ,Turin andGrenoble to the citadel of Valence, where he died six weeks later, onAugust 29 ,1799 .The Conclave
With the loss of the Vatican and the pope's other temporal power, the cardinals were left in a remarkable position. They were forced to hold the conclave in
Venice , making the conclave the last to be held outside Rome. This followed an ordinance issued by Pius VI in1798 , in which was stated that the conclave, in such a situation, would be held in the city with the greatest number of Cardinals among the population. TheBenedictine San Giorgio Monastery , Venice, was the chosen location of the conclave. The city, along with other northern Italian land, was at the time held by theArchduchy of Austria , whose rulerFrancis II, Holy Roman Emperor agreed to foot the costs of the conclave.Despite beginning on
30 November 1799 the assembled cardinals could not overcome astalemate between three candidates until March1800 . Thirty-four Cardinals were present at the start, with the late arrival of CardinalFranziskus Herzan von Harras who was also the imperial commissioner and used the imperial veto of Francis II twice.Ercole Consalvi was almost unanimously voted as secretary of the conclave; he would prove an influential figure in the election of the new pope.Carlo Bellisomi seemed the sure winner, with wide support from the Cardinals, but his unpopularity among the Austrian Cardinals, who preferred Mattei, subjected him to the veto. The conclave added a third possible candidate in CardinalHyacinthe Sigismond Gerdil CRSP but was also vetoed by Austria. As the conclave was in the third month Cardinal Maury, a neutral, suggested Chiaramonti who, with the support of the powerful Conclave secretary, was elected.Barnaba Luigi Count Chiaramonti was, at the time, the bishop of
Imola in theSubalpine Republic . He had stayed in place after the assumption of hisdiocese 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 famouspapier-mâché papal tiara . It was adorned with their own jewels. Chiaramonti was declared Pope Pius VII and crowned on21 March in a cramped monastery church.A new pope
By the
Battle of Marengo on14 June 1800 The French regained Northern Italy from the forces of Austria. Following this promotion, 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 on3 July . Fearing further invasion he decreed thePapal States should remain neutral between Napoleonic Italy in the north and theKingdom of Naples in the south. At the time the latter was ruled by Ferdinand III of Sicily/Ferdinand IV of Naples, a member of theHouse of Bourbon .Ercole Consalvi , the secretary of the conclave, ascended to theCollege of Cardinals and became the Secretary of the Papal State on11 August . On15 July France officially rerecognisedCatholicism as its majority (not state) religion in theConcordat 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 theTreaty of Luneville .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 theFirst French Empire declined following the Pope's refusal to divorceJerome Bonaparte and Elizabeth Patterson in 1805. The newly-crowned Emperor of the French restarted his expansionist policies and assumed control overAncona , Naples (following theBattle of Austerlitz , making his brotherJoseph Bonaparte its new monarch), Pontecorvo andBenevento . The changes angered the pope, and following his refusal to accept them, Napoleon, in February1808 , demanded he subsidise France's military conflict with theUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . The pope again refused, leading to further confiscations of territory such asUrbino ,Ancona andMacerata . Finally in1809 , on17 May , the Papal states were formally annexed to the First French Empire and Pius VII was taken to theChâteau de Fontainebleau .A unique conclave
The conclave of 1800 had several unique features and occurrences which render it quite estranged from not only many of its predecessor conclaves, but also all those successive gatherings to date. Foremost, it is the last to be held outside Rome, in this case Venice. In fact, all conclaves since the
Western Schism (1378 ) have been held inRome with this as a sole exception.As the graph on the left demonstrates, the conclave was conducted with the fewest cardinals present since
1534 , a total of thirty-four. Indeed, due to the political situation in which the church found itself at the time it had just 45 cardinals in total, the lowest number since the 31 of1513 .At 105 days (
30 November –14 March ) this also happens to be the longest conclave to date since its immediate predecessor, which lasted from5 October 1774 until15 February 1775 - a total of 133 days.The extent to which the successor was debated, and the contentiousness of certain nominations, may be seen in the fact that the Austrian Emperor presented the veto twice - a unique occurrence in the history of the conclave; the Empire then included Venice, and had already denied the use of St. Mark's to the Cardinals for declining to accept the Austrian candidate. Typically, a single veto would have been used by a represented kingdom, to ensure that a particular objectionable candidate would not succeed.
List of participants
*
Gian Francesco Albani , da Urbino,bishop of Ostia and Velletri
*Henry Benedict Stuart ,bishop of Frascati
*Leonardo Antonelli ,bishop of Palestrina
*Luigi Valenti-Gonzaga ,bishop of Albano
*Francesco Carafa di Trajetto
*Francesco Saverio de Zelada
*Guido Calcagnini ,bishop of Osimo e Cingoli
*Bernardino Honorati ,bishop of Senigallia
*Andrea Gioannetti ,archbishop of Bologna
*Hyacinthe Sigismond Gerdil ,CRSP
*Carlo Giuseppe Filippo di Martiniana ,bishop of Vercelli
*Alessandro Mattei
*Franziskus Herzan von Harras
*Giovanni Andrea Archetti , Archbishop-bishop of Ascoli Piceno
*Giuseppe Maria Doria-Pamphilj
*Gregorio Barnaba Chiaramonti ,OSB ,bishop of Imola (Elected Pope Pius VII)
*Carlo Bellisomi ,bishop of Cesena
*Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana ,archbishop of Toledo ,Spain
*Ignazio Busca
*Stefano Borgia
*Giambattista Caprara
*Antonio Dugnani
*Ippolito Vicenti-Mareri
*Jean-Sifrein Maury ,Archbishop of Paris ,France
*Giambattista Bussi de Pretis ,bishop of Jesi
*Francesco Maria Pignatelli
*Aurelio Roverella
*Giulio Maria della Somaglia
*Antonmaria Doria-Pamphilj
*Romualdo Braschi-Onesti
*Filippo Carandini
*Ludovico Flangini Giovanelli
*Fabrizio Dionigi Ruffo
*Giovanni Rinuccini List of absentees
*
Christoph Anton von Migazzi von Waal und Sonnenthurn ,archbishop of Vienna ,Austria
*Dominique de La Rochefoucauld ,archbishop of Rouen ,France
*Johann Heinrich von Frankenberg ,archbishop of Mechlin ,Belgium
*Louis-René-Eduard de Rohan-Guéménée ,archbishop of Strasbourg
*Giuseppe Maria Capece Zurlo Theat. ,archbishop of Naples
*Vicenzo Ranuzzi ,bishop of Ancona e Umana
*Muzio Gallo
*Carlo Livizzani Forni
*José Francisco de Mendonça ,patriarch of Lisbon ,Portugal
*Antonio de Sentmenat y Castella ,patriarch of the Western Indies ,Spain
*Louis-Joseph de Laval-Montmorency References
*cite web|url=http://www.pax-et-veritas.org/Popes/justpius/pius_vii.htm|title=Pope Pius VII|work=The Popes Pius|accessdaymonth=8 April |accessyear=2005
*cite web|url=http://www.fiu.edu/~mirandas/conclave-xix.htm|title=Papal elections of the XIX. Century (1799-1878)|work=The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church|accessdaymonth=8 April |accessyear=2005
*cite web|url=http://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/italy/papalstate17991809.html|title=Papal State and Papacy, 1799-1809 |work=History of the Papal State|accessdaymonth=9 April |accessyear=2005
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.