Pope Leo XII
Pope Leo XII was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 28 September 1823 to his death in February 1829.
Leo XII was in ill health from the time of his election to the papacy to his death less than six years later, though he was noted for enduring pain well. He was a deeply conservative ruler, who enforced many controversial laws, including one forbidding Jews to own property. Though he raised taxes, the Papal States remained financially poor.
Biography
Family
Della Genga was born in 1760 at the Castello della Genga in the territory of Fabriano to an old noble family from Genga, a small town in the March of Ancona, part of the Papal States. He was the sixth of ten children born to Count Ilario della Genga and Maria Luisa Periberti di Fabriano, and he was the uncle of Gabriele della Genga Sermattei, who in the 19th century was the only nephew of a pope to be elevated to cardinal.Education and ordination
Della Genga studied theology at the Collegio Campana in Osimo from 1773 to 1778 and later at the Collegio Piceno in Rome until 1783 when he commenced studies at the Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles. He later received the subdiaconate in 1782 and then the diaconate and was ordained to the priesthood on 14 June 1783; he received the latter two from Cardinal Marcantonio Colonna.Papal nuncio and episcopate
In 1790 the attractive and articulate della Genga attracted favourable attention by a tactful oration commemorative of the late Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. In 1794 Pope Pius VI made him a canon of Saint Peter's Basilica, and in 1793 created him Titular Archbishop of Tyre. He was consecrated in Rome in 1794 after the appointment and was despatched to Lucerne as the Apostolic Nuncio to Switzerland. In 1794 he was transferred to the Apostolic Nunciature to Cologne, but owing to the war had to make his residence in Augsburg. At this time, he believed it would be his last post and organized the construction of tombs for his mother and for himself.During the dozen or more years he spent in Germany he was entrusted with several honourable and difficult missions, which brought him into contact with the courts of Dresden, Vienna, Munich and Stuttgart, as well as with Napoleon. It is charged, however, that during this period his finances were disordered, and his private life was not above suspicion.
After the Napoleonic abolition of the States of the Church, he lived for some years at Monticelli Abbey, solacing himself with music and with bird-shooting, pastimes which he continued even after his election as Pope.
Cardinal
In 1814 della Genga was chosen to carry Pope Pius VII's congratulations to Louis XVIII of France upon his restoration.On 8 March 1816 he was created Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere and he received his red zucchetto on 11 March and his titular church on 29 April 1816. Later he was appointed as the Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, and appointed to the episcopal see of Sinigaglia, which he resigned in 1818 for health reasons. He resigned without ever having entered his diocese.
On 9 May 1820, Pope Pius VII gave him the distinguished post of Vicar-General of His Holiness for the Diocese of Rome.
Pontificate
Papal election
Pope Pius VII died in 1823 after yet another long pontificate that spanned over two decades. In the conclave of 1823, della Genga was the candidate of the zelanti faction and in spite of the active opposition of France, he was elected as the new pope by the cardinals on 28 September 1823, taking the name of Leo XII.His election had been facilitated because he was thought to be close to death, but he unexpectedly rallied. He had even remarked about his own health to the cardinals, saying that they would be electing "a dead man". It was said in the conclave that he lifted his robes to show the cardinals a pair of swollen and ulcerated legs to deter them, but that made them even more eager to elect him. Before the conclave opened, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies indicated that it objected to five candidates in the election which included della Genga. While della Genga did not receive a single vote in the first and second ballots, he received seven in the third and then four in the fifth. While it seemed that Cardinal Antonio Gabriele Severoli would prevail on 21 September since he had just below the needed amount, Cardinal Giuseppe Albani interposed the veto on the behalf of the Austrian Empire against Severoli. While it was later indicated that the French court would not be amenable to the election of della Genga, Severoli's voting bloc decided to cast their votes for della Genga, seeing him receive 34 votes to become pope.
Leo XII was 63 at the time of his election and frequently fell victim to infirmities. He was tall and thin with an ascetic look and a melancholic countenance. At this time Vincent Strambi served as bishop for the remainder of the pontificate of Pope Pius VII before his successor Pope Leo XII accepted Strambi's resignation and summoned him to Rome as his advisor. But the sudden illness of the pope – which seemed likely to prove fatal – prompted Strambi to offer his own life to God so that the pope could live. Leo XII rallied to great surprise but Strambi died of a stroke within the week.
So Leo XII fell ill after his coronation but after his recovery, he showed surprising endurance in carrying out his work. Leo XII devoted himself to his work and was simple in his mode of life. He had a passion for shooting birds and was rumored to have killed a peasant with whom he argued about sporting rights.
The cardinal protodeacon Fabrizio Ruffo crowned him as pontiff on 5 October 1823.
Foreign policy
Pius VII's Cardinal Secretary of State, Ercole Consalvi, who had been della Genga's rival in the conclave, was immediately dismissed, and Pius' policies rejected. Leo XII's foreign policy, entrusted at first to the octogenarian Giulio Maria della Somaglia and then to the more able Tommaso Bernetti, negotiated certain concordats very advantageous to the papacy. Personally most frugal, Leo XII reduced taxes, made justice less costly, and was able to find money for certain public improvements, yet he left the Church's finances more confused than he had found them, and even the elaborate jubilee of 1825 did not really mend financial matters.With regard to the Spanish American Wars of Independence, he initially displayed a cautious stance of neutrality between the Spanish Empire and the Spanish American Republics, not recognizing them diplomatically, but allowing the priestly Ordination of clergy sympathetic to the independence movements, seeking to avoid explicit declarations against the independentists for fear of anti-clerical policies by the Liberadores in response, as well as an abuse of the patronato real in Spain to pressure the Pope to increase his hostility. But after receiving representatives of the Spanish Court and also envoys from Gran Colombia proposing a Concordat, he issued opinions against the latter in order to restore tranquility and order to his subjects in those domains, influencing the rejection of the Holy See to the patriotic Armies that they affirm liberal ideologies and the Modernist errors of the Enlightenment contrary to natural law and the Thomistic Conception of Politics, as well as considering that the cause of the socio-political disorder in Latin America came from the insurgents with their rebellions against the Legitimate authority and seeking to force the practice of the voluntaristic doctrines of the Social Contract, a work condemned in the Index librorum prohibitorum, which prevented a pacification of the continent in a situation of anarchy since the Napoleonic invasion. It was thus that he proclaimed the encyclical Etsi Liam Diu, in continuity with the previous pro-royalist encyclical, Etsi longissimo terrarum, in which he exhorted the Hispanic American clergy "to advise and insist among the faithful to obedience and submission to the legitimate sovereign and mother country," that is, to maintain the Pact with the Hispanic Monarchy intact by inspiring the common population to be faithful vassals and to abjure the "new ideas" of the Hispanic American Enlightenment and its Secularism, as well as to achieve a Reconciliation between Hispanic Americans involved in a fratricidal civil war that threatened to fragment the political ties of Hispanicity. However, due to logistical problems, the document was not delivered to the Spanish Americans until after the Battle of Ayacucho and the Creole and liberal elites, once they learned of its existence, took the opportunity to accuse the document of being a Spanish forgery.
Image:Schedrin NewRome.jpg|thumb|left|The Tiber with Castel Sant'Angelo, Ponte Sant'Angelo and St. Peter in the time of Leo XII, by Silvestr Feodosievich Shchedrin
Domestic policy
Leo XII's domestic policy was one of extreme conservatism: "He was determined to change the condition of society, bringing it back to the utmost of his power to the old usages and ordinances, which he deemed to be admirable; and he pursued that object with never flagging zeal." He condemned the Bible societies, and under Jesuit influence reorganised the educational system, placing it entirely under priestly control through his bull Quod divina sapientia and requiring that all secondary instruction be carried out in Latin, as he required of all court proceedings, also now entirely in ecclesiastical hands. All charitable institutions in the Papal States were put under direct supervision.Laws such as that forbidding Jews to own property and allowing them only the shortest possible time in which to sell what they owned, and that requiring all Roman residents to listen to Catholic catechism commentary, led many of Rome's Jews to emigrate, to Trieste, Lombardy and Tuscany.
"The results of his method of governing his states soon showed themselves in insurrections, conspiracies, assassinations and rebellion, especially in Umbria, the Marches and Romagna; the violent repression of which, by a system of espionage, secret denunciation, and wholesale application of the gibbet and the galleys, left behind it to those who were to come afterwards a very terrible, rankling and long-enduring debt of party hatreds, of political and social demoralisation, andworst of alla contempt for and enmity to the law, as such." In a regime that saw the division of the population into Carbonari and Sanfedisti, he hunted down the Carbonari and the Freemasons with their liberal sympathisers.
Leo XII made himself unpopular with the people due to the fact that he constrained them to endless rules that concerned private life and public affairs. He decreed that a dressmaker who sold low or transparent dresses would incur ipso facto excommunication. The pope also denied the Jews the right to possess material possessions and allowed them the shortest time to sell their belongings. He revived the regulations of the Middle Ages in regard to segregation and marks for identification.
While often considered an archconservative Leo XII held a high opinion of the liberal Catholic priest Lamennais having a portrait of him hung in his private chambers. When the latter visited Rome in 1824 Leo offered him a Vatican apartment and in 1828 a cardinalate. According to Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman before the full consistory he said that Lamennais was " a distinguished writer, whose works had not only rendered eminent services to religion, but rejoiced and astonished Europe." However some believe that the quote was actually about the historian John Lingard.
Leo XII had a fascination with archeology. When Jean-François Champollion deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs, Leo XII invited him to Rome to study its obelisks. Leo XII later printed and engraved Champollion's work at his personal expense. Champollion later wrote to Cardinal Wiseman that "It is a
real service which His Holiness renders to science, and I shall be happy if you will be good enough to place at his feet the homage of my profound acknowledgment.