The French Revolutionary Government and Pope Pius VII entered into the Concordat of 1801.
While Roman Catholicism regained some powers and became recognized as "the religion of the
great majority of the French", it was not afforded the latitude it had enjoyed prior to the
Revolution and was not re-established as the official state religion. The Church relinquished all
claims to estate seized after 1790, the clergy was state salaried and was obliged to swear
allegiance to the State. Religious freedom was restored.
Pope Pius VII
| Servant of God, Pope Pius VII | |
|---|---|
| Bishop of Rome | |
 | |
| Papacy began | 14 March 1800 |
| Papacy ended | 20 August 1823 |
| Predecessor | Pius VI |
| Successor | Leo XII |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 21 September 1765 |
| Consecration | 21 December 1782 by Francesco Saverio de Zelada |
| Created Cardinal | 14 February 1785 by Pius VI |
| Personal details | |
| Birth name | Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti |
| Born | 14 August 1742 Cesena, Papal States |
| Died | 20 August 1823 (aged 81) Rome, Papal States |
| Previous post |
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| Motto | Aquila Rapax ("Rapacious eagle")[1] |
| Coat of arms |  |
| Sainthood | |
| Venerated in | Catholic Church |
| Title as Saint | Servant of God |
| Attributes |
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| Patronage |
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| Other popes named Pius | |
Pope Pius VII (14 August 1742 – 20 August 1823), born Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti,[a] was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 14 March 1800 to his death in 1823. Chiaramonti was also a monk of the Order of Saint Benedict in addition to being a well-known theologian and bishop throughout his life.
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 1796, during the French Revolutionary Wars, French troops under Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Rome and took as prisoner Pope Pius VI. He was taken as 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. 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 Rome, 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 Chiaramonti was born in Cesena in 1742, the youngest son of Count Scipione Chiaramonti (30 April 1698 - 13 September 1750. His mother, Giovanna Coronata (d. 22 November 1777), was the daughter of the Marquess Ghini; through her, the future Pope Pius VII was related to the Braschi family of Pope Pius VI after marriage on 10 November 1713.[citation needed] Though his family was of noble status, they were not wealthy but rather, were of middle-class stock.[3]
His maternal grandparents were Barnaba Eufrasio Ghini and Isabella de' conti Aguselli. His paternal grandparents were Giacinto Chiaramonti (1673-1725) and Ottavia Maria Altini; his paternal great-grandparents were Scipione Chiaramonti (1642-1677) and Ottavia Maria Aldini. His paternal great-great grandparents were Chiaramonte Chiaramonti and Polissena Marescalchi.
His siblings were Giacinto Ignazio (19 September 1731 - 7 June 1805), Tommaso (19 December 1732 - 8 December 1799) and Ottavia (1 June 1738 - 7 May 1814).
Like his brothers, he 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 Parmaand 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 (1775–99). 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.
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,[4] and as the Bishop of Imola, an office he held until 1816.[5]
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 Christmashomily 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."[6]
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Concordat of 1801
The Concordat of 1801 was an agreement between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII, signed on 15 July 1801 in Paris.[1] It remained in effect until 1905. It sought national reconciliation between revolutionaries and Catholics and solidified the Roman Catholic Church as the majority church of France, with most of its civil status restored. The hostility of devout Catholics against the state had then largely been resolved. It did not restore the vast church lands and endowments that had been seized upon during the revolution and sold off. Catholic clergy returned from exile, or from hiding, and resumed their traditional positions in their traditional churches. Very few parishes continued to employ the priests who had accepted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of the Revolutionary regime. While the Concordat restored much power to the papacy, the balance of church-state relations tilted firmly in Napoleon's favour. He selected the bishops and supervised church finances.[2][3]
Napoleon and the pope both found the Concordat useful. Similar arrangements were made with the Church in territories controlled by Napoleon, especially Italy and Germany.[4]
History
During the French Revolution, the National Assembly had taken Church properties and issued the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which made the Church a department of the State, effectively removing it from papal authority. At the time, the nationalized Gallican Church was the official church of France, but it was essentially Catholicism. The Civil Constitution caused hostility among the Vendeans towards the change in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the French government. Subsequent laws abolished the traditional Gregorian calendar and Christian holidays.[5]
The Concordat was drawn up by a commission with three representatives from each party. Napoleon Bonaparte, who was First Consul of the French Republic at the time, appointed Joseph Bonaparte, his brother, Emmanuel Crétet, a counselor of state, and Étienne-Alexandre Bernier, a doctor in theology. Pope Pius VII appointed Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, Cardinal Giuseppe Spina,[6] archbishop of Corinth, and his theological adviser, Father Carlo Francesco Maria Caselli.[7] The French bishops, whether still abroad or returned to their own country, had no part in the negotiations. The concordat as finally arranged practically ignored them.[8]
While the Concordat restored some ties to the papacy, it was largely in favor of the state; it wielded greater power vis-à-vis the Pope than previous French regimes had, and church lands lost during the Revolution would not be returned. Napoleon understood the utility of religion as an important factor of social cohesion. His was a utilitarian approach.[9] He could now win favor with French Catholics while also controlling Rome in a political sense. Napoleon once told his brother Lucien in April 1801, "Skillful conquerors have not got entangled with priests. They can both contain them and use them."[10] As a part of the Concordat, he presented another set of laws called the Organic Articles.
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