What really happened at Savona is the only serious controversy in the life of Pius VII., and this controversy is based entirely on the reluctance of Catholic writers to admit that the Pope erred. The usual theory, based on the work of D'Haussonville,[347] is that Pius fell into so grave a condition, mentally and physically, that he can hardly be regarded as responsible. Recent and authoritative Catholic writers have given a different defence. H. Welschinger[348] seems to suggest that Pius was drugged by his medical attendant, but he goes on to make this fantastic suggestion superfluous by claiming that Pius did not consent at all, either orally or in writing. Father Rinieri, on the other hand, scorns the theory of temporary insanity, holds that the Pope deliberately assented, and claims that the consent was perfectly justified because it was conditional; the Pope agreed if, as the bishops said, his concession would lead to peace and his restoration to liberty. These theories destroy each other, and are severally inadmissible. Welschinger, to exonerate the Pope from weakness, assumes that the Archbishop of Tours lied; for that prelate wrote at once to Paris that they had "drawn up a note in His Holiness's room, and he had accepted it," and on his duplicate of the note he wrote: "This note, drawn up in His Holiness's room, and in a sense under his directions, was approved and agreed to."[349] Indeed, when Welschinger himself quotes the Pope saying, in his fit of repentance, "Luckily I signed nothing," we gather that Pius orally assented. Rinieri, on the other hand, is wrong in making the Pope's assent strictly conditional; the last clause of the note merely states that the Pope is assured that good results will follow. And both writers are at fault when they lay stress on the fact that the note was a mere draft of an agreement. Unless the four bishops lied, Pius VII., under great importunity and predictions of disaster, and in a very poor state of health, consented to a principle which was utterly inconsistent with Papal teaching.
Later events put this beyond question, and make all these speculations ridiculous. It is unquestioned that when, on the following morning, Pius asked for the bishops and learned that they had gone, he fell into a fit of remorse and despair which brought him near to the brink of madness. It is equally unquestioned that Napoleon's council drew up a decree in the sense of the famous Savona note and that on September 20th Pius signed it. Napoleon had been dissatisfied with the Pope's oral consent and his retractation (which the Emperor concealed), and had tried to bully the council into a declaration independently of the Papacy. When he failed, he assured them of the Pope's consent and they passed the decree. Eight bishops and five cardinals took it to Savona, and the Pope subscribed to it. The only plausible defence of Pius is that he granted or delegated the power to the archbishops, instead of merely declaring that the archbishops possessed it. But the Pope's acute remorse shows that he had not deliberately meant this.
Napoleon, however, saw that his scheme had failed in this respect, and he kept the Pope at Savona while he set out on the Russian campaign. After a time the Emperor, alleging that British ships hovered about Savona, ordered the removal of the Pope to Fontainebleau, and he was transferred with such secrecy and discomfort that he almost died in crossing Mont Cenis. At Fontainebleau he maintained his quiet, ascetic life: even afforded the spectacle of a Pope mending his own shirts. The thirteen "black" cardinals—the men who opposed Napoleon and were stripped of their red robes and sent into exile—could not approach him, and he paid little attention to Napoleon's courtiers. In December (1812) Napoleon was back from his terrible failure, but he still sought to bluff the aged Pope. In a genial New-Year letter he proposed that Pius should settle at Paris and have two million francs a year: that he would in future permit the Catholic rulers to nominate two thirds of the cardinals: and that the thirteen black cardinals should be censured by the Pope and gracefully pardoned by the Emperor. Pius hesitated; and on the evening of January 18th, when Napoleon suddenly burst into his room and embraced him, the old tears of childlike joy stood in his eyes once more. Napoleon remained and put before him a new Concordat, sacrificing the demands he had made in his letter, but demanding the abdication of the temporal power and six months' limit for the Papal institution of bishops. Harrowing pictures of the Pope's condition and the pressure put on him by Napoleonic prelates are drawn by pious pens. But the fact is not disputed that on January 25th the "martyr-Pope" signed the Concordat and sacrificed the temporal power.
When Pacca and Consalvi and the black cardinals, who were now set at liberty, arrived at Fontainebleau, they shuddered at his surrender, but they could not upbraid the pale, worn, distracted Pontiff. He acknowledged his "sin," as he called it, and asked their advice. By one vote—fourteen against thirteen—the stalwarts decided that he must retract and defy Napoleon, and a remarkable week followed. They drafted a new Concordat, and the Pope wrote a few lines each day, which were taken away in Pacca's pocket to the rooms of Cardinal Pignatelli, who lived outside. The Emperor's spies were defeated, and he had a last burst of rage when the new Concordat was put before him. But the Allies were closing round the doomed adventurer. As they approached, he offered Pius half the Papal States, and made other futile proposals. In January, 1814, Pius was conveyed to Savona: on March 17th he was informed that he was free. Napoleon had fallen.
Consalvi was dispatched to join in the counsels of the Allies, and Pacca, who took his place, set himself joyously to obliterate every trace of the Revolution and Napoleon. Monasteries were re-opened, schools and administrative offices restored to the clergy, the Inquisition re-established, the Jews thrust back into the Ghetto: even these new French practices of lighting streets at night and vaccinating people were abolished. Above all things the Society of Jesus must be restored. Pius had in 1801 recognised the Society in Russia[350] and in 1804 he granted it canonical existence in the two Sicilies. The appalling experience of the last twenty-five years had now swept the last trace of liberalism out of the minds of Catholic monarchs, and on August 17, 1814, the Bull Sollicitudo Omnium restored the Society throughout the world; though Portugal rejected it and France dared not carry it out. A few months later Rome trembled anew, when it heard that Napoleon had left Elba and Murat marched across the Papal States to support him. Pius fled from Rome, rejecting all the overtures of Napoleon and Murat, but the Hundred Days were soon over and reaction reigned supreme. Pius never lost his quaint appreciation of Napoleon. Mme. Letitia, the brothers Lucien and Louis, and Fesch lived in honour at Rome, and, when the mother complained that the English were killing her son at St. Helena, Pius earnestly begged Consalvi to intercede for him. At Napoleon's death in 1821 he directed Fesch to conduct a memorial service.
Meantime Consalvi had won back the Papal States (except Avignon and Venaissin and a strip of Ferrara) at the Vienna Congress, and had returned to moderate the excesses of the reactionary Pacca. Consalvi had no liberal sentiments, but he had intelligence. At least half of the educated Italians were Freethinkers, and the secret society of the Carbonari spread over the country, ferociously combatted by the orthodox Sanfedisti. Italy entered on what the wits called the long struggle of the "cats" and the "dogs": a rife period for brigands. Consalvi, in spite of Pacca and the Zelanti, compromised. He retained many of the Napoleonic reforms, though, when the Spanish revolution of 1820 had its revolutionary echoes all over Italy, he drew nearer to the Holy Alliance for the bloody extirpation of liberalism. Rome prospered once more, and artists and princes flocked to it, but Pius VII. must have felt in his last years that the soil of Europe still heaved and shuddered.
The relations of the Quirinal[351] with other countries were restored in some measure, in face of stern opposition. A new Concordat with France was signed in 1817, but the Legislative Assembly refused to pass it and it did not come into force before the death of Pius. Spain set up a régime of truculent orthodoxy under the sanguinary rule of Ferdinand, and the Revolution of 1820 was crushed for him by the French. Austria made no new Concordat and retained much of the Febronian temper. Prussia signed a favourable Concordat in 1821. Bavaria came to an agreement in 1817, but the liberals defeated it; and Naples and Sardinia were ruled in the spirit of the Holy Alliance. William I. sought a Concordat for the Netherlands, though without result: England endeavoured to bring about an agreement in regard to the Irish bishops, which was defeated by the Irish: and the dioceses of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Richmond, and Cincinnati were set up in America.
I do not enter into closer detail, as we recognize in all this work the hand of Consalvi rather than of Pius. The aged Pope continued to rejoice over every symptom, or apparent symptom, of religious recovery, and to miscalculate his age. Even the revolution of 1820 failed to shake orthodox security and led only to a more truculent persecution of the new spirit. Pius had now passed his eightieth year and could not be expected to see what neither Metternich nor Consalvi could see. In the summer of 1823 he fell into his last illness. As he sank, men noticed that he was murmuring "Savona, Fontainebleau," but he died praying quietly on August 17th. It was a strange fate that put Barnaba Luigi Chiaramonti on a throne in such an age. Whatever church-lore he may have had, he confronted the problems of his age with dim and feeble intelligence, and he was at times, when there was no Pacca or Consalvi to guide him, induced to make concessions which are not consistent with the fond title of "martyr-Pope." He was a good Bishop of Imola.
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