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Pope Pius VII (Italian: Pio VII; born Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti; [a] 14 August 1742 – 20 August 1823) was head of the Catholic Church from 14 March 1800 to his death in August 1823. He ruled the Papal States from June 1800 to 17 May 1809 and again from 1814 to his death.
Aug 16, 2024 · Pius VII (born Aug. 14, 1742, Cesena, Papal States [Italy]—died Aug. 20, 1823, Rome) was an Italian pope from 1800 to 1823, whose dramatic conflicts with Napoleon led to a restoration of the church after the armies of the French Revolution had devastated the papacy under Pius VI.
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Pope Pius VI died in captivity, while his successor Pope Pius VII was held hostage for five years.
Between the hours of 2 and 3 on the morning of July 6, 1809, French troops under the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte scaled the walls of the gardens of the Quirinal Palace in Rome and penetrated into the part of the palace occupied by papal servants. After an hour of violent skirmishes with the Swiss guards, they arrested Pope Pius VII, spiriting him away in the night to Savona, near Genoa. He would not return to Rome for another five years.
The kidnapping was the climax of the combative relationship between the global leader of the Catholic Church and the brash Emperor. From the beginning of Pius VII’s papacy in 1800 to the fall of Napoleon in 1815, the two men were continually at loggerheads, with the French military leader regularly infuriated by the pope’s refusal to meet his demands.
Napoleon's Bloodless Coup
But it wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened: in 1796, during the French Revolutionary Wars, Napoleon's troops had invaded Rome and taken the previous pontiff, Pope Pius VI, as a prisoner to France, where he died in 1799. The following year, after the papal seat sat vacant for six months, cardinal Chiaramonti was elected to the papacy, taking the name Pius VII. But because the French had seized the papal tiaras when they had arrested Pius VI, the new pope was crowned on 21 March 1800 with a papier-mâché tiara.
Despite his desire to control Europe without rival, Napoleon understood that he needed to reach an accommodation with the all-powerful Catholic Church. In long negotiations eight years before his kidnapping, Pius VII eventually signed the Concordat of 1801, which recognized that the Church was ‘the religion of the great majority of the French people’, but simultaneously limited the size of the French clergy and bound its members tightly to the French state, which would henceforth pay their salaries. The agreement strictly constrained the pope’s authority in France, and approved of the Revolutionary government’s selling off of the Catholic Church’s vast landholdings in France.
Explore the extraordinary life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte, the great military genius who took France to unprecedented heights of power, and then brought it to its knees when his ego spun out of control.
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Bull Sollicitudo omnium (Rome, 7 August 1814) [ Italian ]
- 14,21.III.1800
- 20.VIII.1823
- Cesena
- Barnaba (Gregorio) Chiaramonti
Apr 20, 2024 · A Benedictine monk and a renowned theologian, Pius VII, born Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti, is remembered along with his predecessor Pius VI for his unyielding opposition to Napoleon's attempts to subjugate the Church that cost him his arrest and imprisonment in 1809.
Oct 16, 2023 · CWN Editor's Note: Pope Francis has issued a message for the bicentenary of death of the Servant of God Pope Pius VII (1742-1823), who reigned from 1800 to 1823.
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He died on August 20th, 1823. While his health hit a steep decline upon hitting the age of 80, a disastrous fall on July 6th of 1823 left him with a fractured hip that he never truly recovered from.
