To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII

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Ambrogio's teaching focuses on 18th- and 19th-century Europe, his main area of expertise being the French Revolution, Napoleonic Empire, European Restorations and Catholicism. Supervision The empire's legislators were forced to seek other solutions. Two ecclesiastical conseils met in late 1809 and early 1810 charged with advising the council of state on the most effective means of resolving the episcopal stand-off. The most loyal bishops and theologians of the empire, headed by Cardinal Fesch, met to search for a solution. Three series of questionnaires on the governance of the Church during the present crisis were issued and provided the agenda for discussion. Footnote 47 Most preferred a negotiated settlement with the imprisoned pope. They proposed that a delegation be sent to Savona to discuss terms. Footnote 48 For Pius, the release of the college of cardinals and his return to Rome were the sine qua non for future negotiation. Footnote 49 Yet the government was concerned about what would happen if the pope continued to resist conciliation. Pius VII even attended and anointed Napoleon at his coronation as the emperor in 1804. Pontiffs traditionally crowned the Holy Roman Emperor. At the height of the ceremony, Napoleon took the crown from his hands and placed it on his own head. Some writers have seen this move as a snub. 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

The Concile National of 1811: Napoleon, Gallicanism and the

Such a conclusion would be hasty, however, as throughout 1812 and early 1813 negotiations between Napoleon and the pope continued. They would culminate in the Concordat of Fontainebleau, signed by Pius vii on 25 January 1813. Its provisions were profoundly inspired by the decrees of the concile national of 1811, and the influence of Jansenism was implicit throughout its articles. This new concordat (subsequently repudiated by Pius) would have created a Catholic Church that accepted the supremacy of the empire and would have given the clergy a new utilitarian mission. Footnote 107 The vicissitudes, and eventual retraction, of this concordat are beyond the scope of this article. For the moment it was the key point at which Napoleon's policy of neo-conciliarism had seemed to triumph over Ultramontane resistance. 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 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

Church Times/Canterbury Press:

Ambrogio Caiani gives us a bold, provocative new assessment of the French Emperor and his relationship with the Catholic Church. 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

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

THE entry of Brigadier Etienne Radet, supported by 700 soldiers of the occupying French garrison, into Rome’s Quirinale Palace in the small hours of 5/6 July 1809 was ill-starred. An attempt at surreptitious ingress via the gardens and an upstairs window descended into noisy farce, gendarmes first entangling themselves in ornamental foliage and then crashing to the ground on an overloaded ladder. This was especially the case in the Napoleonic Empire and its struggle with the papacy over episcopal appointments within those territories that fell under its control. The concile national of 1811 was one of the key flashpoints in this struggle for supremacy. This episode reveals much about the nature of Napoleonic imperialism and the Church's distrust of the growing power of the bureaucratic state. French Catholic historiography lavished attention on the concile during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but its assessments were deeply entangled in the context in which they were written. The growing conflict over the occupation of Rome in 1870 and the separation of Church from State in 1905 created a siege mentality among church historians. Catholic aristocrats and scholarly clergymen drew clear parallels between their anti-clerical present and the Napoleonic past. They charted an impressive genealogy of anti-Catholic persecution that cast a long shadow into their republican present. Studies by the comte d'Haussonville, the comte Mayol de Lupé and the abbé Ricard are admirable in their erudition. Footnote 2 These antiquarians had access to minutes, journals and notes whose location today is uncertain. Although there is no surviving evidence, it seems plausible that Savary and the ministry of police leaked these draft decrees to the prelates in Paris, thus heightening their fears of arrest. Whatever the case may be, episcopal resolve melted away during the second half of July 1811. The turning-point came when all bishops in Paris were invited to the ministry of religious affairs and presented with a draft decree containing five articles. Footnote 96 Essentially these returned to notions that the Church in France was autonomous and after six months metropolitans could invest their own bishops. The only concession was article five, that made provision for an enlarged deputation to be sent to Savona to seek papal sanction. Footnote 97 Bigot, as the French minister of religious affairs, and Giovanni Bovara as his Italian counterpart, spent many days trying to persuade the bishops in Paris to accept this draft decree in writing. The letter of adherence drafted by Cardinal Étienne Hubert Cambaceres, archbishop of Rouen, served as the template to which the vast majority of bishops signed their name. Footnote 98 Caiani relates this dramatic story in telling detail but never loses sight of the broader picture, and uses his archival discoveries to excellent effect. The result is both an exciting narrative and a fine work of scholarship, shedding new light on Napoleonic history and that of the modern Catholic Church.”—Munro Price, Literary Review This 5 May will mark the bicentenary of Napoleon’s death on St Helena. The occasion will no doubt be marked, as was the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo six years ago, by a flood of new books about the emperor, adding yet more to the estimated 200,000 already written. Given this saturation, one wonders if there is anything left to say. This fascinating book proves that there is. It does so by focusing on a crucial yet neglected aspect of Napoleon’s rule: his bitter, decade-long confrontation with Pope Pius VII. This marked an important step both in the emperor’s decline and fall, and in the evolution of the Catholic Church.

Ambrogio Caiani’s telling of this story in the present volume is impressive. A particular strength is his deft integration of intellectual and narrative history — especially when it comes to new insights on the Enlightenment. Caiani locates Napoleon’s ecclesiastical policy within a mentality that sought not to destroy religion, but to reshape it and harness its power. Thus “Napoleon, as a man of the Enlightenment, tolerated all religions equally. In return he expected them to preach obedience and subordination to the state as the ultimate source of authority.”

Resilience and Recovery at Royal Courts, 1200–1840

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 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 Caiani is excellent on the local and particular, and is especially good on thephysical encounters between his two principals, which he recounts with colourfully tellingdetail. But his enthralling narrative widens out from the intertwined lives of the two menand their very contrasting entourages to illuminate international relations and the place ofreligion in the politics of the revolutionary and Napoleonic age.”—Colin Jones, French StudiesThe 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. 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. 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

Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII, 1800-1815 - Goodreads To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII, 1800-1815 - Goodreads

However, it is Caiani’s argument that Napoleon’s wish to give the ceremony a religious character was largely sincere. Napoleon would take as a personal slight the various cardinals and other figures who refused to attend. The work of this commission has been ignored by historians, although its findings were truly remarkable for an imperial regime that was so invested in legislative innovation. Footnote 90 Its jurists agreed that a metropolitan archbishop could invest new bishops, and that this could be done with the approval of the concile. For the commission, the most important question was what to do if archbishops refused to comply. Under the ancien régime their revenues could be withheld and their properties confiscated. However, as church lands had been nationalised in 1789 this remedy was unlikely to be sufficiently intimidating. The decade-long struggle between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII is one of the great dramas of the revolutionary era, but remains little-known. Now, and for the first time in English, Ambrogio Caiani recounts this riveting story in full – and offers insight into one of the great conflicts that has shaped, and continues to shape, the modern world, the rivalry between religion and the state.’—Munro Price, author of Napoleon: The End of Glory

Supervision

Gallicanism, as André Latreille reminds us, had always been a multifaceted phenomenon, Footnote 31 divided, for convenience, into three different strands: monarchical, parlementaire and ecclesiastical. Napoleon was interested in the monarchical branch of this tradition, but the parlementaire strand did re-emerge unexpectedly in 1811. The emperor's attachment to the traditions of the Church of Gaul were to an extent opportunistic. For example, the concordat of 1801 can hardly be held up as a shining example of French ecclesiological tradition. Footnote 32 Indeed, the pope's power as supreme head of the Church was used to force the resignation of the surviving bishops of the ancien régime Gallican establishment. A more Ultramontane measure is hard to imagine. Footnote 33 It was viewed as a crime by the petite église which never forgave Pius vii for his betrayal. Footnote 34 Furthermore, those constitutional bishops who had sworn loyalty to the French Revolution and its civil constitution had remained wary of the Roman dimension of the Concordat. Footnote 35 However the really unknown quantity was the new generation of bishops created after 1800 who had little or no experience of the ancien régime or of a constitutional episcopate. The emperor, as he admitted himself later on St Helena, had badly misjudged the French clergy's attachment to the traditions of Gallicanism. Footnote 36 The experience of revolution during the 1790s had created younger curés and bishops who placed their highest hopes and loyalties in Rome. An imperial state, that had inherited the revolution's non-denominational nature and lukewarm appreciation of religion, remained suspect to them. 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, The Spectator , “Books of the Year” Riveting. . . . An important and wonderfully written book.”—Francis P. Sempa, New York Journal of Books Caiani skillfully switches between a more academic tone and a journalistic one. This serious work of scholarship, which is the result of hours spent in archives, can occasionally read like a thriller — especially when telling how the pope nearly died during his relocation from Italy to the outskirts of Paris.