Pope Pius VII
Pope Pius VII was head of the Catholic Church from 14 March 1800 to his death in August 1823. He ruled the Papal States from June 1800 to 17 May 1809 and again from 1814 to his death. Chiaramonti was also a monk of the Order of Saint Benedict in addition to being a well-known theologian and bishop.
Chiaramonti was made Bishop of Tivoli in 1782, and resigned that position upon his appointment as Bishop of Imola in 1785. That same year, he was made a cardinal. In 1789, the French Revolution took place, and as a result a series of anti-clerical governments came into power in the country. In 1798, during the French Revolutionary Wars, French troops under Louis-Alexandre Berthier invaded Rome and captured Pope Pius VI, taking him as a prisoner to France, where he died in 1799. The following year, after a sede vacante period lasting approximately six months, Chiaramonti was elected to the papacy, taking the name Pius VII.
Pius at first attempted to take a cautious approach in dealing with Napoleon. With him he signed the Concordat of 1801, through which he succeeded in guaranteeing religious freedom for Catholics living in France, and was present at his coronation as Emperor of the French in 1804. In 1809, however, during the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon once again invaded the Papal States, resulting in his excommunication through the papal bull Quum memoranda. Pius VII was taken prisoner and transported to France. He remained there until 1814 when, after the French were defeated, he was permitted to return to Italy, where he was greeted warmly as a hero and defender of the faith.
Pius lived the remainder of his life in relative peace. His papacy saw a significant growth of the Catholic Church in the United States, where Pius established several new dioceses. Pius VII died in 1823 at age 81.
In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI began the process towards canonizing him as a saint, and he was granted the title Servant of God.
Biography
Early life
Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti was born in Cesena in 1742, the youngest son of Count Scipione Chiaramonti. His mother, Giovanna Coronata, was the daughter of the Marquess Ghini. Though his family was of noble status, they were not wealthy but rather, were of middle-class stock.Barnaba attended the Collegio dei Nobili in Ravenna but decided to join the Order of Saint Benedict at the age of 14 on 2 October 1756 as a novice at the Abbey of Santa Maria del Monte in Cesena. Two years after this on 20 August 1758, he became a professed member and assumed the name of Gregorio. He taught at Benedictine colleges in Parma and Rome, and was ordained a priest on 21 September 1765.
Episcopate and cardinalate
A series of promotions resulted after his relative, Giovanni Angelo Braschi, was elected Pope Pius VI. A few years before this election occurred, in 1773, Chiaramonti became the personal confessor to Braschi. In 1776, Pius VI appointed the 34-year-old Dom Gregory, who had been teaching at the Monastery of Sant'Anselmo in Rome, as honorary abbot in commendam of his monastery. Although this was an ancient practice, it drew complaints from the monks of the community, as monastic communities generally felt it was not in keeping with the Rule of St. Benedict. He served as librarian at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.In December 1782, the pope appointed Dom Gregory as the Bishop of Tivoli, near Rome. Pius VI soon named him, in February 1785, the Cardinal-Priest of San Callisto, and as the Bishop of Imola, an office he held until 1816.
When the French Revolutionary Army invaded Italy in 1797, Cardinal Chiaramonti counseled temperance and submission to the newly created Cisalpine Republic. In a letter that he addressed to the people of his diocese, Chiaramonti asked them to comply "... in the current circumstances of change of government " to the authority of the victorious general Commander-in-Chief of the French army. In his Christmas homily that year, he asserted that there was no opposition between a democratic form of government and being a good Catholic: "Christian virtue makes men good democrats.... Equality is not an idea of philosophers but of Christ...and do not believe that the Catholic religion is against democracy."
Papacy
Election
Following the death of Pope Pius VI, by then virtually France's prisoner, at Valence in 1799, the conclave to elect his successor met on 30 November 1799 in the Benedictine San Giorgio Monastery in Venice. There were three main candidates, two of whom proved to be unacceptable to the Habsburgs, whose candidate, Alessandro Mattei, could not secure sufficient votes. However, Carlo Bellisomi also was a candidate, though not favoured by Austrian cardinals; a "virtual veto" was imposed against him in the name of Francis II and carried out by Cardinal Franziskus Herzan von Harras.After several months of stalemate, Ercole Consalvi proposed Chiaramonti as a compromise candidate. On 14 March 1800, Chiaramonti was elected pope, certainly not the choice of die-hard opponents of the French Revolution, and took as his pontifical name Pius VII in honour of his immediate predecessor. He was crowned on 21 March—in the adjacent monastery church as Emperor Francis II was not pleased by the choice of the cardinal electors and did not allow them to use San Marco Basilica for the ceremony—by means of a rather unusual ceremony, wearing a papier-mâché papal tiara—the French had seized the tiaras held by the Holy See when occupying Rome and forcing Pius VI into exile. The new pope then left for Rome, sailing on a barely seaworthy Austrian ship, the Bellona, which lacked even a galley. The twelve-day voyage ended at Pesaro and he proceeded to Rome.
Concordat of 1801
One of Pius VII's first acts was appointing the minor cleric Ercole Consalvi, who had performed so ably as secretary to the recent conclave, to the College of Cardinals and to the office of Cardinal Secretary of State. Consalvi immediately left for France, where he was able to negotiate the Concordat of 1801 with the First Consul Napoleon. While not effecting a return to the old Christian order, the treaty did provide certain civil guarantees to the Church, acknowledging "the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion" as that of the "majority of French citizens".The main terms of the concordat between France and the pope included:
- A proclamation that "Catholicism was the religion of the great majority of the French" but was not the official religion, maintaining religious freedom, in particular with respect to Protestants.
- The Pope had the right to depose bishops.
- The state would pay clerical salaries and the clergy swore an oath of allegiance to the state.
- The church gave up all claims to church lands that were taken after 1790.
- Sunday was reestablished as a "festival", effective Easter Sunday, 18 April 1802.
Exile
Due to a reluctance to align the Papal States with the Continental System, France occupied and annexed the Papal States in 1809 and exiled Pius VII to Savona. On 15 November 1809 Pius VII consecrated the church at La Voglina, Valenza, Piedmont with the intention of the Villa La Voglina becoming his spiritual base whilst in exile. His residency was short lived once Napoleon became aware of his intentions of establishing a permanent base and he was soon exiled to France. Despite this, the pope continued to refer to Napoleon as "my dear son" but added that he was "a somewhat stubborn son, but a son still".This exile ended only when Pius VII signed the Concordat of Fontainebleau in 1813. One result of this new treaty was the release of the exiled cardinals, including Consalvi, who, upon re-joining the papal retinue, persuaded Pius VII to revoke the concessions he had made in it. This Pius VII began to do in March 1814, which led the French authorities to re-arrest many of the opposing prelates. Their confinement, however, lasted only a matter of weeks, as Napoleon abdicated on 11 April of that year. As soon as Pius VII returned to Rome, he immediately revived the Inquisition and the Index of Condemned Books.
Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca, who was kidnapped along with Pope Pius VII, took the office of Pro-Secretary of State in 1808 and maintained his memoirs during his exile. His memoirs, written originally in Italian, have been translated into English and describe the ups and down of their exile and the triumphant return to Rome in 1814.
Pius VII's imprisonment did in fact come with one bright side for him. It gave him an aura that recognized him as a living martyr, so that when he arrived back in Rome in May 1814, he was greeted most warmly by the Italians as a hero.
Relationship with Napoleon I
From the time of his election as pope to the fall of Napoleon in 1815, Pius VII's reign was completely taken up in dealing with France.He and the Emperor were continually in conflict, often involving the French military leader's wishes for concessions to his demands. Pius VII wanted his own release from exile as well as the return of the Papal States, and, later on, the release of the 13 "Black Cardinals", i.e., the cardinals, including Consalvi, who had snubbed the marriage of Napoleon to Marie Louise, believing that his previous marriage was still valid, and had been exiled and impoverished in consequence of their stand, along with several exiled or imprisoned prelates, priests, monks, nuns and other various supporters.
File:David-wilkie-Napoleon-and-pope-pius-vii-at-fontainebleau-1836.png|thumb|Napoleon and Pius VII at Fontainebleau by David Wilkie, 1836
Restoration of the Jesuits
On 7 March 1801, Pius VII issued the brief Catholicae fidei that approved the existence of the Society of Jesus in the Russian Empire and appointed its first superior general as Franciszek Kareu. This was the first step in the restoration of the order. On 31 July 1814, he signed the papal bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum which universally restored the Society of Jesus to its previous provinces, and the Jesuits began to resume their work in those countries. He appointed Tadeusz Brzozowski as the Superior General of the order.Image:Pope Pius VII statue.JPG|thumb|left|100px|Vatican Museums