To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII

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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. 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. 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 Studies Funder reveals how O’Shaughnessy Blair self-effacingly supported Orwell intellectually, emotionally, medically and financially ... why didn’t Orwell do the same for his wife in her equally serious time of need?’ For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.

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

At first glance, the two men had much in common. Both were of Italian heritage. Napoleon was born in Corsica to a local noble family only a few years after its capture by France. Pope Pius VII was born in Cesena, just 9 miles from the Adriatic Sea in what was then part of the Papal States. Brilliantly written, based on meticulous research in the archives and beautifully produced, it is a book that should be on the shelves of any serious Napoleonist as well as one that ought to be read with particular attention by those who continue to be mesmerized by visions of ‘Napoleon the Great’.”—Charles J. Esdaile, European History Quarterly Alamy Double Portrait of Napoleon and Pope Pius VII by L. B. Coclers (c.1805, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Napoleon died 200 years ago this week Indeed, the episode sketched in the book is important for any interested in understanding the roots of church-state conflict in Europe and elsewhere around the globe.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. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. 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. Please list any fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. This pertains to all the authors of the piece, their spouses or partners. 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.

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

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. Failing to make progress in the negotiations in Savona, the imperial government staged a publicity campaign clothing their struggle against the pope in Gallican colours. Footnote 58 No previous studies have noted how the academic elite of the Empire rallied behind the concile national of 1811 and tried to provide the emperor with potent intellectual and ecclesiological ammunition. Of vital importance in this operation to win over the public sphere was Pierre Daunou who, in 1810, published his far from innocent La Puissance temporelle des papes et l'abus qu'ils ont fait de leur ministère spirituel. Footnote 59 Daunou was a former Oratorian teaching brother and a Brumairian who knew his church history well. After a tempestuous term as president of the tribunate, he had been moved to the directorship of the imperial archives. Footnote 60 Here he was in the perfect position to strengthen the regime's anti-papal ideology with historical material. The pope’s carefully controlled captivity, first in Italy and later in France, would last five years. Incredibly, it was the second time in less than a decade that a pope had been kidnapped. His immediate predecessor, Pope Pius VI, had died in captivity at the hands of the French Revolutionary state. Yet, this affront to the Catholic Church had not involved Napoleon. The general of the age was transiting the Mediterranean on his return to France after his campaigns in Egypt and Palestine when Pope Pius VI died. This treaty, which established the basic form of many later agreements between the Vatican and secular rulers, guaranteed state financial support for the Church while entailing the papacy’s abandonment of the Legitimist Bourbon cause. In a situation that foreshadows today’s contentious Vatican-China deal, the Concordat also sought to heal the schism between a persecuted “loyalist” Church and tolerated “constitutional” one. 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 affairs of religion have all too often been caught up in and sacrificed to the interests of a third-rate minor power. If half of Europe has separated itself from the Church of Rome, one can attribute this to the contradiction which has always existed between the truth and principles of religion, which are universally valid, against the particular claims and interests that concern a mere corner of Italy. I have put an end to this scandal forever. I have reunited Rome to the Empire. I have given the popes palaces in both Rome and Paris. If they have the interests of religion at heart they will come and reside at the centre of the affairs of Christianity, in the same way as St Peter preferred Rome to the Holy Land. Footnote 71

To Kidnap a Pope — when Napoleon met his match

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 resulting document, the Concordant of 1801, saw many rights restored to the church. Priests were made employees of a state they swore allegiance to, and the Vatican’s oversight was enshrined, but the fate of priests who had married during the French Revolution would be a lingering concern of the Catholic Church for decades.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

To Kidnap a Pope - Yale University Press

Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them.’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. 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 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.