To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII

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The most unintended outcome of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic decades was the strengthening of the papacy and its Ultramontane ideology. Of all the forces that resisted French ‘cultural imperialism’ the most successful and relentless in its refusal to acquiesce was the Church of Rome. This phenomenon, which Michael Broers has called the ‘War against God’, reached a significant crisis point in 1811. Footnote 1 On the surface it seemed as if the Napoleonic behemoth had conquered Europe and now commanded universal obedience. Yet the behaviour of the clergy in the French imperium betrayed just how much dissent and anger lurked beneath apparently placid waters. Empire and Religion did not operate in harmony and conflicts over ultimate control of the Church were the norm. 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 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.

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A groundbreaking account of Napoleon Bonaparte, Pope Pius VII, and the kidnapping that would forever divide church and state Ambrogio receivedhis doctorate from Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge in 2009. Since then he has taught at the universities of Greenwich and York and at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. He became Lecturer in Modern European History at Kent in 2013. Research interests 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 skillfully switches between a more academic tone and a journalistic one. This serious work of scholarship, which is the result of hours spent in archives, can occasionally read like a thriller — especially when telling how the pope nearly died during his relocation from Italy to the outskirts of Paris. 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. A scholarly monograph that reads like a thriller; and is a work of narrative history which ably threads ideas into the heart of its presentation.”—Alexander Faludy, Church Times

CAIANI | Senior Lecturer | Doctor of Philosophy Ambrogio CAIANI | Senior Lecturer | Doctor of Philosophy

If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.The empire's legislators were forced to seek other solutions. Two ecclesiastical conseils met in late 1809 and early 1810 charged with advising the council of state on the most effective means of resolving the episcopal stand-off. The most loyal bishops and theologians of the empire, headed by Cardinal Fesch, met to search for a solution. Three series of questionnaires on the governance of the Church during the present crisis were issued and provided the agenda for discussion. Footnote 47 Most preferred a negotiated settlement with the imprisoned pope. They proposed that a delegation be sent to Savona to discuss terms. Footnote 48 For Pius, the release of the college of cardinals and his return to Rome were the sine qua non for future negotiation. Footnote 49 Yet the government was concerned about what would happen if the pope continued to resist conciliation. Fabian Perssonafter completing his doctoral thesis Servants of Fortune in Lund, Fabian Persson is now a Lecturer and Associate Professor in History at Linnaeus University in Sweden. Two recent books are Women at the Early Modern Swedish Court: Power, Risk, and Opportunity (Amsterdam University Press 2021) and Survival and Revival. Sweden's Court and Monarchy, 1718 to 1930 (Palgrave Macmillan 2020). 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. Caiani points out that the operation that netted the pope used swarm tactics that Napoleon himself would have approved of, yet while Napoleon was a master of battlefields, the pope proved to be an evenly matched political opponent. The two tussled over a fundamental question, one that still haunts European politics — should the state or the church exercise supreme authority? 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.

Ambrogio Caiani - School of History - University of Kent Dr Ambrogio Caiani - School of History - University of Kent

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. Try Ambrogio A. Caiani’s To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII...It is the story of the struggle, fought with cunning, not force, between the forgotten Roman nobleman Barnaba Chiaramonti, who became Pope Pius VII, and the all-too-well-remembered Napoleon.”—Jonathan Sumption, Spectator ‘Books of the Year’ Despite the obvious mutual advantages of this arrangement, relations between Pius and Napoleon soured rapidly. Napoleon’s importunate demands for the annulment of his marriage to Josephine echoed Henry VIII’s two centuries earlier. Increasingly, it became evident that Imperial territorial ambitions in Italy were a threat not only to external papal dependencies, but the Papal States and even the Eternal City itself. In Napoleonic Europe, there would be no room for the temporal autonomy that the papacy saw as the precondition for spiritual independence. Continuing with a series of ecclesiastical biographies (and my obsession with Napoleon), 'To Kidnap a Pope' is the story of Pius VII, the Pope who stood up to Napoleon, and suffered greatly for it. A stark contrast to my previous book on the relatively ineffectual and silent Pius XII, Pius VII feels more like a 19th-century martyr given his (almost) unbroken resolve.

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In gripping, vivid prose, Caiani brings to life the struggle for power that would shape modern Europe. It all makes for a historical read which is both original and enjoyable.”—Antonia Fraser, author of Marie Antoinette 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. The decade-long struggle between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII is one of the great dramas of the revolutionary era, but remains little-known. Now, and for the first time in English, Ambrogio Caiani recounts this riveting story in full – and offers insight into one of the great conflicts that has shaped, and continues to shape, the modern world, the rivalry between religion and the state.’—Munro Price, author of Napoleon: The End of Glory Ambrogio Caiani has undertaken a serious reassessment of Pius VII’s kidnapping and imprisonment, an important episode in the nineteenth-century history of the papacy that was last examined by E.E.Y. Hales in 1962. Caiani provides us with a careful, detailed account of the turbulent relationship between the Pope and Napoleon, using new archival material which he unearthed in Italy, France and Britain….This very readable and vivid account of the relationship between Pius VII and Napoleon is truly a work of fine scholarship."—John Pollard, The Tablet Munro Priceis Professor of Modern European History at the University of Bradford, UK, and specializes in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century French political and diplomatic history. Among his books are Louis XVI and the Comte de Vergennes: Correspondence, 1774-1787 (with John Hardman; Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1998), The Fall of the French Monarchy: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the Baron de Breteuil (London, Macmillan, 2002) and Napoleon: The End of Glory (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014