Pope Pius VI

Pope Pius VI
Bishop of Rome
Portrait by Pompeo Batoni, 1775
Church	Catholic Church
Papacy began	15 February 1775
Papacy ended	29 August 1799
Predecessor	Clement XIV
Successor	Pius VII
Previous posts	Referendary of the Apostolic Signatura (1758–1759) General Treasurer of the Apostolic Camera (1766–1773) Commendatory Abbot of Santa Maria di Valdiponte (1767–1773) Commendatory Abbot of Subiaco (1773–1798) Cardinal-Priest of Sant’Onofrio (1773–1775)
Orders
Ordination	1758
Consecration	22 February 1775 by Gian Francesco Albani
Created cardinal	26 April 1773 by Clement XIV
Personal details
Born	Angelo Onofrio Melchiorre Natale Giovanni Antonio Braschi 25 December 1717 Cesena, Papal States
Died	29 August 1799 (aged 81) Valence, France
Motto	Floret in Domo Domini (It blossoms in the house of God)
Other popes named Pius

Pope Pius VI (Italian: Pio VI; born Count Angelo Onofrio Melchiorre Natale Giovanni Antonio called Giovanni Angelo or Giannangelo Braschi, 25 December 1717 – 29 August 1799) was head of the Catholic Church and leader of the Papal States from 15 February 1775 to his death in August 1799.

Born in Cesena, he was elected Pope in the 1774–1775 conclave. Pius VI condemned the French Revolution and the persecution of the Catholic Church in France that resulted from it. French troops commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Papal army and occupied the Papal States in 1796. In 1798, upon his refusal to renounce his temporal power, Pius was taken prisoner and transported to France. He died eighteen months later in Valence. His reign of more than twenty-four years is the fifth-longest in papal history. He was also the longest-serving pope of the Papal States.

Biography

Early years

Giovanni Angelo Braschi was born in Cesena on Christmas Day in 1717 as the eldest of eight children to Count Marco Aurelio Tommaso Braschi and Anna Teresa. His grandmother was Cornelia Zangari Bandi, an aristocrat known for the mysterious circumstances of her death. His uncle was Cardinal Giovanni Carlo Bandi. His nephew was Romoaldo Braschi-Onesti, the penultimate cardinal-nephew.

Braschi was baptized in Cesena two days later on 27 December and was given the baptismal name of Angelo Onofrio Melchiorre Natale Giovanni Antonio. After completing his studies in the Jesuit college of Cesena and receiving his doctorate of both canon and civil law in 1734, Braschi continued his studies at the University of Ferrara.

The priest

Braschi became the private secretary of papal legate Cardinal Tommaso Ruffo, Bishop of Ostia and Velletri. Cardinal Ruffo took him as his conclavist at the 1740 papal conclave and when the latter became the Dean of the College of Cardinals in 1740, Braschi was appointed as his auditor, a post he held until 1753.

Braschi's skill in the conduct of a mission to the court of Naples won him the esteem of Pope Benedict XIV. In 1753, following the death of Cardinal Ruffo, Benedict appointed Braschi one of his own secretaries. In 1755, the pope appointed him as a canon of St Peter's Basilica.

In 1758, putting an end to an engagement to be married, Braschi was ordained to the priesthood. He was also appointed in 1758 Referendary of the Apostolic Signatura and held that position until the following year. He also became the auditor and secretary to Cardinal Carlo Rezzonico, the nephew of Pope Clement XIII. In 1766, Clement XIII appointed Braschi treasurer of the camera apostolica.

The cardinal

Braschi was a conscientious administrator, which was not good news for some. The latter managed to convince Pope Clement XIV to curb his zeal by promoting him to the cardinalate and accordingly on 26 April 1773 he was made Cardinal-Priest of Sant'Onofrio. For a brief period of time this rendered him innocuous to the less scrupulous. Left without any specific task, Braschi retired to the Abbey of Saint Scholastica, Subiaco, of which he was commendatory abbot.

Papacy

Papal election

Pope Clement XIV died in 1774 and in the ensuing conclave to choose a successor, Spain, France and Portugal dropped all objections to the election of Braschi, who was one of the more moderate opponents of the anti-Jesuit stance of the late pope.

Braschi received support from those who disliked the Jesuits and believed he would continue the policy of Clement XIV and maintain the provisions of Clement's brief Dominus ac Redemptor (1773) which had dissolved the order. On the other hand, the pro-Jesuit Zelanti faction believed him to be secretly sympathetic towards the order and expected him to remedy the wrongs the Jesuits suffered in the previous pontificate. These various expectations would face Braschi after his election with the virtual impossibility of satisfying either side.

Cardinal Braschi was elected pope on 15 February 1775 and took the name "Pius VI". He was consecrated bishop on 22 February 1775 by Cardinal Gian Francesco Albani and was crowned that same day by the Cardinal Protodeacon Alessandro Albani.

First actions

Pius VI first opened a jubilee his predecessor had already convoked, the 1775 Jubilee Year.

The early acts of Pius VI gave fair promise of reformist rule and tackled the problem of corruption in the Papal States. He reprimanded Prince Potenziani, the governor of Rome, for failing to adequately deal with corruption in the city, appointed a council of cardinals to remedy the state of the finances and relieve the pressure of imposts, called to account Nicolò Bischi for the spending of funds intended for the purchase of grain, reduced the annual disbursements by denying pensions to many prominent people, and adopted a reward system to encourage agriculture.

Society of Jesus

Upon his election, Pius VI ordered the release of Lorenzo Ricci, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, who was held prisoner in the Castel Sant'Angelo, but Ricci died before the decree of liberation arrived. It is perhaps due to Pius VI that the Jesuits managed to escape dissolution in White Ruthenia and Silesia. In 1792, the pope considered the universal re-establishment of the Society of Jesus as a bulwark against the ideas of the French Revolution, but did not carry this through.

Gallican and Febronian protests

Besides facing dissatisfaction with this temporising policy, Pius VI also faced elements of Enlightenment thinking which sought to limit papal authority. Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim, since 1749 bishop of Myriophiri in partibus and auxiliary bishop and vicar-general to the archbishop-elector of Mainz, wrote under the pseudonym of "Febronius", expounding Gallican ideas of national Catholic Churches. Although Hontheim was himself induced (not without public controversy) publicly to retract his positions, they were nevertheless adopted in Austria. There the social and ecclesiastical reforms which had been undertaken by Emperor Joseph II and his minister Kaunitz, as a way of influencing appointments within the Catholic hierarchy, were seen as such a threat touched to papal authority that Pius VI adopted the exceptional course of travelling in person to Vienna.

The Pope set out from Rome on 27 February 1782 and, though magnificently received by the Emperor, his mission proved a failure. Nevertheless, not many years later he did succeed in curbing the attempts of several German archbishops at the Congress of Ems in 1786 to win greater independence.

Liberal opposition

In the Kingdom of Naples the liberal minister Bernardo Tanucci agitated for certain concessions regarding feudal homage due to the papacy and some concessions were made. More serious disagreements arose with Leopold II, later emperor, and Scipione de' Ricci, bishop of Pistoia and Prato, upon the questions of proposed liberal reforms to the Church in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The papal bull Auctorem fidei, issued on 28 August 1794, is a condemnation of the Gallican and Jansenist propositions and tendencies of the Synod of Pistoia (1786).

Other activities

On 17 August 1775, Pope Pius VI promulgated with a Papal Decree the authenticity of Our Lady of Šiluva.

Pius VI saw the development of the Catholic Church in the United States of America. He released the American clergy from the jurisdiction of the Vicar Apostolic in England, and erected the first American episcopal see, the Diocese of Baltimore in November 1789.

Pius VI elevated 73 cardinals in 23 consistories. He canonized no saints during his pontificate but beatified a total of 39 individuals that included Lawrence of Brindisi and Amato Ronconi.

The pope also set the Papal States' finances on much steadier ground. Pius is best remembered in connection with the expansion of the Pio-Clementine Museum, which was begun at the suggestion of his predecessor Clement XIV; and with an attempt to drain the Pontine Marshes, but Pius VI did successfully drain the marshes near Città della Pieve, Perugia, and Spoleto. He also restored the Via Appia. Pius VI also deepened and expanded the harbors of Terracina and Porto d'Anzio, a major center of Pontifical trade. Pius was a great patron of the arts and humanities; he also added a new sacristy to Saint Peter's Basilica.

French Revolution

At the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Pius VI witnessed the suppression of the old Gallican Church as well as the confiscation of pontifical and ecclesiastical possessions in France. He saw the events as a sign of opposition against the social order ordained by God and also viewed it as a conspiracy against the church. The pope condemned both the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and supported a league against the revolution. He issued two briefs – Quod aliquantum (1791) and Caritas (1791) – to condemn the ecclesiastical reforms that were proposed.

1791 marked the end of diplomatic relations with France and the papal nuncio, Antonio Dugnani, was recalled to Rome as a result. One of the reasons for the breach was the seizure by the revolutionaries of the Comtat Venaissin, ending 516 years of Papal rule in Avignon.

King Louis XVI was executed via guillotine on 21 January 1793, and his daughter Marie Thérèse petitioned Rome for the canonization of her father. Pius VI hailed the late king as a martyr on 17 June 1793 in a meeting with cardinals, giving hope to a potential possibility of sainthood. In 1820, two decades following the death of Pius VI, the Congregation of Rites put an end to the possible sainthood since it was impossible to prove the king died for religious reasons rather than political ones. Pius VI argued that the main thrust of the revolution was against the Catholic religion and Louis XVI himself. He also wrote that the French revolutionaries abolished "the monarchy, the best of all governments".

Arrest and death under Napoleon

In 1796, French Republican troops under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Italy and defeated the Papal troops. The French occupied Ancona and Loreto. Pius VI sued for peace which was granted at Tolentino on 19 February 1797; but on 28 December 1797, in a riot blamed by papal forces on some Italian and French revolutionists, the popular brigadier-general Mathurin-Léonard Duphot, who had gone to Rome with Joseph Bonaparte as part of the French embassy, was killed and a new pretext was furnished for invasion.

General Louis-Alexandre Berthier marched to Rome, entered it unopposed on 10 February 1798, and, proclaiming a Roman Republic, demanded of the pope the renunciation of his temporal authority.

Upon his refusal, Pius was taken prisoner, and on 20 February was escorted from the Vatican to Siena, and thence to the Certosa near Florence. The French declaration of war against Tuscany led to his removal (he was escorted by the Spaniard Pedro Gómez Labrador, Marquis of Labrador) by way of Parma, Piacenza, Turin and Grenoble to the citadel of Valence, the chief town of Drôme where he died six weeks after his arrival, on 29 August 1799, having then reigned longer than any pope since Saint Peter. To date, he is the last Pope to die outside of Italian territory.

Pius VI's body was embalmed, but was not buried until 30 January 1800 after Napoleon saw political advantage to burying the deceased Pope in efforts to bring the Catholic Church back into France. His entourage insisted for some time that his last wishes were to be buried in Rome, then behind the Austrian lines. They also prevented a Constitutional bishop from presiding at the burial, as the laws of France then required, so no burial service was held. This return of the investiture conflict was settled by the Concordat of 1801.

Pius VI's body was removed from Valence on 24 December 1801 and buried at Rome 19 February 1802, when Pius VI was given a Catholic funeral, attended by Pope Pius VII, his successor.

Reburial

By decree of Pope Pius XII in 1949, the remains of Pius VI were moved to the Chapel of the Madonna below St. Peter's in the Vatican Grottoes. His remains were placed in an ancient marble sarcophagus. The inscription on the wall above the container reads:

"The mortal remains of Pius VI, consumed in unjust exile, by order of Pius XII were placed fittingly here and decorated by a marble ornament most excellent for its art and history in 1949".

Representation in literature

A long audience with Pius VI is one of the most extensive scenes in the Marquis de Sade's narrative Juliette, published in 1798. Juliette shows off her learning to the Pope (whom she most often addresses as "Braschi") with a verbal catalogue of alleged immoralities committed by his predecessors.

See also

• Cardinals created by Pius VI
• List of popes
• Luis Ignatius Peñalver y Cárdenas
• Palazzo Ghini

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Pope Pius VI — (GIOVANNI ANGELICO BRASCHI).

Born at Cesena, 27 December, 1717; elected 15 February, 1775; died at Valence, France, 29 Aug., 1799. He was of a noble but impoverished family, and was educated at the Jesuit College of Cesena and studied law at Ferrara. After a diplomatic mission to Naples, he was appointed papal secretary and canon of St. Peter's in 1755. Clement XIII appointed him treasurer of the Roman Church in 1766, and Clement XIV made him a cardinal in 1775. He then retired to the Abbey of Subiaco, of which he was commendatory abbot, until his election as Pius VI.

Spain, Portugal, and France had at first combined to prevent his election, because he was believed to be a friend of the Jesuits; he was well disposed towards the order, but he dared not revoke the Bull of their suppression. Still he ordered the liberation of their general, Ricci, a prisoner in the Castle of Sant' Angelo in Rome, but the general died before the decree of liberation arrived. Upon the request of Frederick II of Prussia he permitted the Jesuits to retain their schools in Prussia; while in Russia, he permitted an uninterrupted continuation of the order. Soon after his accession he took steps to root out the Gallican idea of papal supremacy which had been spread in Germany by Hontheim (see. Joseph II forbade the Austrian bishops to apply to Rome for faculties of any kind, and suppressed innumerable monasteries. Pius VI resolved to go to Vienna; he left Rome on 27 Feb., 1782, and arrived in Vienna on 22 March. The emperor received him respectfully, though the minister, Kaunitz, neglected even the ordinary rules of etiquette. The pope remained at Vienna until 22 April, 1782. All that he obtained from the emperor was the promise that his ecclesiastical reforms would not contain any violation of Catholic dogmas, or compromise the dignity of the pope. The emperor accompanied the pope on his return as far as the Monastery of Mariabrunn, and suppressed this monastery a few hours after the pope had left it. Scarcely had the pope reached Rome when he again saw himself compelled to protest against the emperor's unjustifiable confiscation of ecclesiastical property. But when Joseph II filled the vacant See of Milan of his own authority, Pius solemnly protested, and it was probably at this occasion that he threatened the emperor with excommunication. On 23 Dec., 1783, the emperor unexpectedly came to Rome to return the papal visit. He was determined to continue his ecclesiastical reforms, and made known to the Spanish diplomat, Azara, his project of separating the German Church entirely from Rome. The latter, however, dissuaded him from taking this fatal step. To avoid worse things, the pope granted him the right of nominating the bishops in the Duchies of Milan and Mantua, in a concordat dated 20 Jan., 1784 (see Nussi, "Conventiones de rebus ecclesiasticis et civilibus inter S. Sedem et civilem potestatem", Mainz, 1870, 138-9).

Joseph's example was followed in Tuscany by his brother, the Grand Duke Leopold II and Bishop Scipio Ricci of Pistoia. Here the antipapal reforms culminated in the Synod of Pistoia in 1786, where the doctrines of Jansenius and Quesnel were sanctioned, and the papal supremacy was eliminated. In his Bull "Auctorem fidei" of 28 Aug., 1794, the pope condemned the acts, and in particular eighty-five propositions of this synod. In Germany the three ecclesiastical Electors of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne, and the Archbishop of Salzburg attempted to curtail the papal authority by convening a congress at Ems (q.v.). With Portugal the papal relations became very friendly after the accession of Maria I in 1777, and a satisfactory concordat was concluded in 1778 (Nussi, loc. cit., 138-39). In Spain, Sardinia, and Venice the Governments to a great extent followed in the footsteps of Joseph II. But the most sweeping anti-ecclesiastical reforms were carried out in the Two Sicilies. Ferdinand IV refused the exequatur to all papal briefs that were obtained without the royal permission, and claimed the right to nominate all ecclesiastical beneficiaries. Pius VI refused to accept the bishops that were nominated by the king and, as a result, there were in 1784 thirty vacant sees in the Kingdom of Naples alone, which number had increased to sixty in 1798. The king, moreover, refused to acknowledge the papal suzerainty which had existed for eight hundred years. The pope repeatedly made overtures, but the king persisted in nominating to all the vacant sees. In April, 1791, when more than half the sees in the Kingdom of Naples were vacant, a temporary compromise was reached and in that year sixty-two vacant sees were filled (Rinieri, loc. cit., infra).

In response to the application of the clergy of the United States, the Bull of April, 1788, erected the See of Baltimore.

Pius VI put the papal finances on a firmer basis; drained the marshy lands near Città della Pieve, Perugia, Spoleto, and Trevi; deepened the harbours of Porto d'Anzio and Terracina; added a new sacristy to the Basilica of St. Peter; completed the Musee Pio-Clementino, and enriched it with many costly pieces of art; restored the Via Appia; and drained the greater part of the Pontine Marshes.

After the French Revolution, Pius rejected the "Constitution civile du clergé" on 13 March, 1791, suspended the priests that accepted it, provided as well as he could for the banished clergy and protested against the execution of Louis XVI. France retaliated by annexing the small papal territories of Avignon and Venaissin. The pope's co-operation with the Allies against the French Republic, and the murder of the French attaché, Basseville, at Rome, brought on by his own fault, led to Napoleon's attack on the Papal States. At the Truce of Bologna (25 June, 1796) Napoleon dictated the terms: twenty-one million francs, the release of all political criminals, free access of French ships into the papal harbours, the occupation of the Romagna by French troops etc. At the Peace of Tolentino (19 Feb., 1797) Pius VI was compelled to surrender Avignon, Venaissin, Ferrara, Bologna, and the Romagna; and to pay fifteen million francs and give up numerous costly works of art and manuscripts. In an attempt to revolutionize Rome the French General Duphot was shot and killed, whereupon the French took Rome on 10 Feb., 1798, and proclaimed the Roman Republic on 15 Feb. Because the pope refused to submit, he was forcibly taken from Rome on the night of 20 Feb., and brought first to Siena and then to Florence. At the end of March, 1799, though seriously ill, he was hurried to Parma, Piacenza, Turin, then over the Alps to Briançon and Grenoble, and finally to Valence, where he succumbed to his sufferings before he could be brought further. He was first buried at Valence, but the remains were transferred to St. Peter's in Rome on 17 Feb., 1802 (see I). His statue in a kneeling position by Canova was placed in the Basilica of St. Peter before the crypt of the Prince of the Apostles.

Bullarii Romani Continuatio, ed. BARBERI (Rome, 1842 sq.), V-X; Collectio Brevium atque Instructionem Pii Papæ VI quæ ad præsentes Gallicanarum ecclesiarum calamitates pertinent (2 vols., Augsburg, 1796); Acta Pii VI quibus ecclesia catholica calamitatibus in Gallia consultum est (2 vols., Rome, 1871); BOURGOING, Mémoires historiques et philosophiques sur Pie VI et son pontificat (2 vols., Paris, 1900); GENDRY, Pie VI. Sa vie, son pontificat 1777-99, d'après des archives vaticanes et de nombreux documents inédits (2 vols., Paris, 1907); WOLF, Gesch. der Kath. Kirche unter der Regierung Pius VI (Zürich, 1793- 1802), 7 vols. (Josephinistic); BECCATINI, Storia di Pio VI (4 vols., Venice, 1801-02); FERRARI, Vita Pii VI (Padua, 1802); BERTRAND, Le Pontificat de Pie VI et l'Athéisme Révolutionnaire (2 vols., Bar-le-Duc, 1879); SAMPSON, Pius VI and the French Revolution in Amer. Cath. Quarterly Review (New York, 1907), 220-40, 413-40, 601-31; Pius VI in Catholic World, XIX (New York, 1874), 755-64; TIEPOLI, Relazioni sul conclave per la elezioni di papa Pio VI (Venice, 1896); KÖNIG, Pius VI und die Säkularisation, Program (Kalksburg, 1900); SCHLITTER, Pius VI und Joseph II von der Rückkehr des Papstes nach Rom bis zum Abschluss des Konkordats, ibid. II (Vienna, 1894); CORDARA, De profectu Pii VI ad aulam Viennensem ejusque causis et exitu commentarii, ed. BOËRO (Rome, 1855); RINIERI, Della rovina di una Monarchia, Relazioni storiche tra inediti dell' Archivo Vaticano (Turin, 1910); BALDASSARI, Histoire de l'enlèvement et de la captivité de Pie VI (Paris, 1839), Ger. tr. STECK (Tübingen, 1844); MADELIN, Pie VI et la première coalition in Revue des quest. hist., LXXXI (Paris, 1903), 1-32.

Further reading

• Browne-Olf, Lillian. Their Name Is Pius (1941) pp 3–58 online
• Collins, Jeffrey. Papacy and politics in eighteenth-century Rome: Pius VI and the arts (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
• Hales, E.E.Y. Revolution and Papacy, 1769–1846 (Hanover House, 1960).
• Pastor, Ludwig von, 1952. The History of the Popes from the close of the Middle Ages, (St. Louis: Herder) vols. XXXIX and XL.
• Sampson, Donat. "Pius VI and the French Revolution,” The American Catholic Quarterly Review 31, January – October 1906; Part II, Ibid., p. 413; Part III, p. 601; Part IV and Ibid., Vol. 32, N°. 125, p. 94, January 1907; Part V, Ibid., p. 313.
• Souvay, Charles L. "The French Papal States during the Revolution." Catholic Historical Review 8.4 (1923): 485–496. online

External links

• Media related to Pius VI at Wikimedia Commons
• Works by or about Pius VI at Wikisource
• Quotations related to Pope Pius VI at Wikiquote
• Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church: Giovanni Angelo Cardinal Braschi
• Pope Pius VI on Damian-hungs.de (in German)