1799–1800 papal conclave

The 1799–1800 papal conclave followed the death of Pope Pius VI on August 29, 1799, and led to the selection as pope of Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti, who took the name Pius VII, on March 14, 1800. This conclave was held in Venice and was the last to take place outside Rome. This period was marked by uncertainty for the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church following the invasion of the Papal States and abduction of Pius VI under the French Directory.

Papal conclave
1799–1800
Dates and location
30 November 1799 – 14 March 1800
San Giorgio Monastery, Venice, Archduchy of Austria
Key officials
DeanGianfrancesco Albani
CamerlengoVacant
functions administered by Romualdo Braschi-Onesti
ProtopriestFrancesco Carafa della Spina di Traietto
ProtodeaconAntonmaria Doria-Pamphilj
SecretaryErcole Consalvi
Elected pope
Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti
Name taken: Pius VII

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 brief Dominus ac Redemptor the dissolution of the Society of Jesus was announced. Pro-Jesuit powers remained in support of Pius, thinking him secretly more inclined to the Society than Clement. The Archduchy 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, German archbishops had shown independence at the 1786 Congress of Ems, but were soon brought into line.

At the outbreak of the French Revolution Pius was compelled to see the independent Gallican Church suppressed, the pontifical and ecclesiastical possessions in France confiscated, and an effigy of himself burnt by the populace at the Palais Royal. The murder of the republican agent Hugo Basseville in the streets of Rome (January 1793) gave new ground of offence; the papal court was charged with complicity by the French Convention, and Pius threw in his lot with the First Coalition against the French First Republic.

The State of the See
Napoleon Bonaparte

In 1796 Napoléon Bonaparte invaded the Italian Peninsula, defeated the papal troops and occupied Ancona and Loreto. He did not continue and conquer Rome, as the French Directory ordered, being aware that this would not win favour among the French and Italian populations. Pius sued for peace, which was granted at Tolentino on February 19, 1797. The Treaty of Tolentino transferred Romagna to Bonaparte's newly formed Cispadane Republic (founded in December 1796 out of a merger of Reggio, Modena, Bologna and Ferrara) 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.

Some 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, on December 28, 1797, in a riot created by some Italian and French revolutionists, the French general Mathurin-Léonard Duphot of the French embassy was killed and a new pretext furnished for invasion.

Louis Alexandre Berthier marched to Rome, entered it unopposed on February 13, 1798, and, proclaiming a Roman Republic, demanded of the pope the renunciation of his temporal authority. His actions were at the direction of the French Government, at that time the Directory. Upon the Pope's refusal he was taken prisoner, and on February 20 was escorted from the Vatican to Siena, and thence to the Certosa near Florence. The French declaration of war against Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany led to Pius' removal, though by this time deathly ill, by way of Parma, Piacenza, Turin and Grenoble to the citadel of Valence, where he died six weeks later, on August 29, 1799. Napoleon was not directly involved. He was in the Near East, and did not return to France until November, 1799, where he conducted the coup-d'état of November 9 (18 Brumaire).

The Conclave

With the loss of the Vatican and the pope's other temporal power, the cardinals were left in a remarkable position. All had been expelled from the city of Rome by the French occupying authorities. They were forced to hold the conclave in Venice. This followed an ordinance issued by Pius VI in 1798, which established that when a conclave could not be held in Rome it would be held in the city with the greatest number of cardinals.

The Benedictine San Giorgio Monastery in Venice was chosen as the location for the conclave, and the voting would be held in its night chapel. The city, along with other northern Italian lands, was held by the Archduchy of Austria, whose ruler Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, agreed to defray the costs of the conclave. Since the Secretary of the College of Cardinals was unable to leave Rome to attend, the cardinals elected, in an almost unanimous vote, Msgr. Ercole Consalvi as Secretary in his place. Consalvi would prove an influential figure in the election.

San Giorgio, Venice: location of the conclave

The conclave began on November 30, 1799, and the assembled cardinals could not overcome a stalemate between Bellisomi and Mattei until March 1800. Thirty-four Cardinals were present at the start, with the late appearance in conclave on December 10 of Cardinal Franziskus Herzan von Harras, who was also the imperial plenipotentiary of Francis II. He bore the Imperial commands, the first of which was to get Cardinal Alessandro Mattei elected Pope. Strangely, by December 28, 1799, Cardinal Herzan had not yet presented his credentials as Imperial plenipotentiary to the College of Cardinals, and thus had no special status.[1]

Cardinal Carlo Bellisomi, the Bishop of Cesena, seemed a viable candidate (papabile), with some eighteen committed votes. His unpopularity among the Austrian faction, however, who preferred Cardinal Alessandro Mattei, the Archbishop of Ferrara, subjected Bellisomi to the "virtual veto", since the Mattei faction had sufficient numbers to deny Bellisomi a canonically required two-thirds vote.[2]

The conclave considered a third possible candidate, Cardinal Hyacinthe Sigismond Gerdil CRSP but Austria had rejected him from before the beginning of the Conclave as too old—he was eighty-two. As the conclave was in the third month Cardinal Maury, who supported neither Bellisomi nor Mattei, suggested Gregorio Barnaba Chiaramonti, OSB Cassin., the Bishop of Imola.

In the middle of February, both Herzan and Maury independently calculated that Chiaramonti had about twelve supporters. On March 11, a frank private conversation took place between Cardinal Antonelli and Cardinal Herzan, in which each frankly admitted that the candidacies of Calcagni, Bellisomi, Gerdil, Mattei, and Valenti were failures. During the conversation Cardinal Dugnani appeared and suggested that Chiaramonti might be considered; numbers of supporters of Mattei were willing to go over to him. On March 12, the Spanish agent, Cardinal Francisco Lorenzana, received news from Madrid that he had permission to formally exclude Cardinal Mattei. It was unnecessary to do so, of course, since Bellisomi's supporters had already given him the virtual veto. On March 14, with the support of the active and influential Conclave secretary Consalvi, Cardinal Chiaramonti was elected.

Chiaramonti was, at the time, the bishop of Imola in the Subalpine Republic. He had stayed in place after the assumption of his diocese 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 famous papier-mâché papal tiara. It was adorned with their own jewels. Chiaramonti was declared Pope Pius VII and crowned on March 21 at the monastery church of S. Giorgio.

A new pope
Pius VII by David

By the Battle of Marengo on June 14, 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 on July 3. Fearing further invasion he decreed the Papal States should remain neutral between Napoleonic Italy in the north and the Kingdom of Naples in the south. At the time the latter was ruled by Ferdinand III of Sicily/Ferdinand IV of Naples, a member of the House of Bourbon.

Ercole Consalvi, the Secretary of the Conclave, was created a Cardinal on August 11, and became the Secretary of State of His Holiness. On July 15 France officially re-recognised Catholicism as its majority (not state) religion in the Concordat 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 the Treaty of Lunéville.

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 the First French Empire declined following the Pope's refusal to divorce Jérôme Bonaparte and Elizabeth Patterson in 1805. The newly crowned Emperor of the French restarted his expansionist policies and assumed control over Ancona, Naples (following the Battle of Austerlitz, making his brother Joseph Bonaparte its new monarch), Pontecorvo and Benevento. The changes angered the pope, and following his refusal to accept them, Napoleon, in February 1808, demanded he subsidise France's military conflict with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The pope again refused, leading to further confiscations of territory such as Urbino, Ancona and Macerata. Finally in 1809, on May 17, the Papal states were formally annexed to the First French Empire and Pius VII was taken to the Château de Fontainebleau.

List of participants

List of absentees
  • Christoph Anton von Migazzi von Waal und Sonnenthurn, archbishop of Vienna, Austria
  • Dominique de La Rochefoucauld, archbishop of Rouen, France
  • Joannes-Henricus de Franckenberg, 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
  • José Francisco de Mendonça, patriarch of Lisbon, Portugal
  • Antonio de Sentmenat y Castella, patriarch of the Western Indies, Spain
  • Louis-Joseph de Laval-Montmorency
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References
  1. Ricard, Memoires ... Maury I, p. 286; Duerm, 61-62
  2. Walsh, Michael and Walsh, Michael J., The Conclave, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, p. 139ISBN 9781580511353
  3. C. A. Ricard, Correspondence diplomatique et mémoires inédits du Cardinal Maury I (Lille, 1891), 227-228. Charles Duerm, Un peu plus de lumiere sur le Conclave de Venise et sur les commencements du Pontificat de Pie VII. 1799-1800 (Louvain 1896), 84.

Bibliography
  • "Sede Vacante 1799-1800". The Conclave of 1799-1800. Archived from the original on 21 February 2014. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  • J. P. Adams, Sede Vacante 1799-1800, Documents concerning the Election of 1800, retrieved: 2017-12-31.
  • "Pope Pius VII". The Popes Pius. Archived from the original on 12 March 2005. Retrieved 8 April 2005.
  • "Conclaves of the 19th Century (1799-1878)". The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  • "Papal State and Papacy, 1799–1809". History of the Papal State. Retrieved 9 April 2005.
  • R. Obechea, El Cardinel Lorenzana en el conclave de Venezia (1975). (in Spanish)
  • Alberto Lumbroso, Ricordi e documenti sul Conclave di Venezia (1800) (Roma: Fratelli Bocca 1903). (in Italian)
  • Charles van Duerm, SJ, Un peu plus de lumière sur le Conclave de Venise et sur les commencements du Pontificat de Pie VII. 1799-1800 (Louvain: Ch. Peeters 1896). (in French)
  • Eugenio Cipolletta, Memorie politiche sui conclavi da Pio VII a Pio IX (Milano 1863). (in Italian)
  • Mémoires du Cardinal Consalvi (ed. J. Crétineau-Joly) seconde édition (Paris: Plon 1866), 217-288. (in French)
  • Charles Antoine Ricard (editor), Correspondence diplomatique et mémoires inédits du Cardinal Maury (1792-1817) (Lille 1891) I, 264-379. (in French)
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