On 17 June 1811 the concile national began with a solemn procession and mass at Notre Dame. The sermon preached by Étienne-Marie de Boulogne, bishop of Troyes, offered a reassuringly Gallican preamble, but also reaffirmed absolute loyalty to the papacy. Equally, Cardinal Fesch's decision to have a roll call in the course of which each bishop swore allegiance to the pope, as prescribed by the canons of the Council of Trent, was seen as inappropriate by the emperor. Footnote 72 The most vexed question surrounded the status of those bishops who had been nominated to sees but had not received papal confirmation. When taking his oath, the bishop of Troyes dismissed these nominees as ‘those, whose very presence is already a scandal in their dioceses’. Footnote 73 Despite such opposition, they could attend the concile with a consultative voice but no voting rights. Brilliantly written, based on meticulous research in the archives and beautifully produced, it is a book that should be on the shelves of any serious Napoleonist as well as one that ought to be read with particular attention by those who continue to be mesmerized by visions of ‘Napoleon the Great’.”—Charles J. Esdaile, European History Quarterly Alamy Double Portrait of Napoleon and Pope Pius VII by L. B. Coclers (c.1805, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Napoleon died 200 years ago this week

To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII. By Ambrogio A. Caiani

The resulting document, the Concordant of 1801, saw many rights restored to the church. Priests were made employees of a state they swore allegiance to, and the Vatican’s oversight was enshrined, but the fate of priests who had married during the French Revolution would be a lingering concern of the Catholic Church for decades.

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The papacy's refusal to negotiate, let alone invest new bishops, left only one solution open to the imperial administration: namely a recourse to neo-conciliarist measures. Simply put, the French Empire resurrected the late medieval notion that church councils could circumvent papal supremacy. Many historians have seen this process as a cynical exercise by Napoleon to force his will on the Catholic Church. While there is some truth in this assessment, it can rather be argued that the appeal to conciliarism was not entirely misguided. Through this expedient, the Empire sought to appeal to older members of the Catholic hierarchy in France who had lived through the twilight years of Gallicanism and Jansenist controversies over ecclesiology during the second half of the eighteenth century. Footnote 21 Historians of conciliarism have focused on Jansenism and Febronianism and have disregarded its swansong during the early nineteenth century. For example, Francis Oakley's brilliant The conciliarist tradition passes over the events of 1811 in complete silence. Footnote 22 This article contends that neo-conciliarist thinking, even if clumsily articulated, was central to the concile. The most forgotten aspect of 1811 was the brief re-emergence of parlementaire Gallicanism. The council of state appointed a special commission of experts to explore legal remedies and apply pressure on the episcopate to solve the investiture crisis. It was presided over by Régnier, as minister of justice, and included some of the most famous jurists of the empire: Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, Bigot, Michel Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély and Achille Libéral Treilhard. Footnote 87 Many of these men had been close to the Jansenist avocats of the parlement of Paris who had resisted the papal bull Unigenitus with great vigour throughout the eighteenth century. Footnote 88 From this older generation of lawyers they had inherited a disdain for any intrusion by Rome into French affairs. They were eager to protect Gallicanism from papal interference. In this goal they had a keen ally in the Voltairian, and anti-clerical minister of police, Anne Jean Savary duc de Rovigo. Footnote 89 He had been a key figure in the repression of secret networks of Ultramontane clergy, and had overseen the interrogation and arrests of the three bishops who had challenged the emperor's intentions during the concile. In many ways these men were the ideologues of Napoleon's ‘War against God’. 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.

Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII, by Ambrogio A. Caiani To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII, by Ambrogio A. Caiani

The appel comme d'abus inhabited the porous and permeable boundaries of the ancien regime’s alliance of Throne and Altar. Footnote 94 Imperial France had claimed supremacy over all religions and did not recognise an autonomous religious jurisdiction that operated in parallel with that of the state. Even considering resurrecting such an arcane instrument of parlementaire constitutionalism was paradoxical and highlighted the limits of neo-conciliarism. The draft decree that would have re-established and incorporated the appel comme d'abus into law was impressive in its menace. By early August 1811 the decree was at an advanced stage in the drafting process and came close to promulgation. Footnote 95On 25 July Bigot tallied votes for and against. To his satisfaction eighty-five bishops were favourable, while thirteen still opposed the decree. Footnote 99 Ten days later, the concile was reconvened for a pre-orchestrated final general congregation in which nothing was left to chance. Footnote 100 During the closing session, Bigot and Bovara steered the bishops successfully towards a formal ratification of the decree. The imperial government had achieved its objective, yet it could not hide the fact that the concile’s favourable verdict was the outcome of physical coercion and psychological intimidation. The enlarged deputation mandated by the decrees comprised the usual storm-troopers of Gallicanism and was expanded to include Cardinals Aurelio Roverella, Fabrizio Ruffo, Alphonse de Bayanne and Antonio Dugnani who headed for Savona. Footnote 101 They would negotiate with the pope from September until January 1812. Footnote 102 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. Failing to make progress in the negotiations in Savona, the imperial government staged a publicity campaign clothing their struggle against the pope in Gallican colours. Footnote 58 No previous studies have noted how the academic elite of the Empire rallied behind the concile national of 1811 and tried to provide the emperor with potent intellectual and ecclesiological ammunition. Of vital importance in this operation to win over the public sphere was Pierre Daunou who, in 1810, published his far from innocent La Puissance temporelle des papes et l'abus qu'ils ont fait de leur ministère spirituel. Footnote 59 Daunou was a former Oratorian teaching brother and a Brumairian who knew his church history well. After a tempestuous term as president of the tribunate, he had been moved to the directorship of the imperial archives. Footnote 60 Here he was in the perfect position to strengthen the regime's anti-papal ideology with historical material. 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

To Kidnap a Pope by Ambrogio A. Caiani | Waterstones

His second book entitled: To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII 1800-1815waspublished by Yale University Press in April 2021 just before the bicentenary of Napoleon’s death.Ambrogio has written a short blog about his work on Napoleon and Pius VII, and has taken part in an interview on his book. Ambrogio welcomes enquiries from potential MA and PhD students interested in high politics,Religion (especially Catholicism),Empire, diplomacy, military history and princely courts during 18th- and 19th-century Europe, especially France and Italy. Professional 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).

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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

Resilience and Recovery at Royal Courts, 1200–1840

To Kidnap a Pope is 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. It is also a timely reminder of the dangers that ecclesiastical leaders face when they seek to “ride the tiger” of contemporary power politics for transient institutional gain.Riveting. . . . An important and wonderfully written book.”—Francis P. Sempa, New York Journal of Books Ambrogio Caiani’s telling of this story in the present volume is impressive. A particular strength is his deft integration of intellectual and narrative history — especially when it comes to new insights on the Enlightenment. Caiani locates Napoleon’s ecclesiastical policy within a mentality that sought not to destroy religion, but to reshape it and harness its power. Thus “Napoleon, as a man of the Enlightenment, tolerated all religions equally. In return he expected them to preach obedience and subordination to the state as the ultimate source of authority.” Indeed, the episode sketched in the book is important for any interested in understanding the roots of church-state conflict in Europe and elsewhere around the globe.