Pope Leo XII

Pope Leo XII (22 August 1760 10 February 1829),born Annibale Francesco Clemente Melchiore Giro-lamo Nicola Sermattei della Genga,[lower-alpha 1] reignedfrom 28 September 1823 to his death in 1829.As pope, Leo XIIs reign of the Papal States was unpop-ular among most people who would revolt in uprisings tosome of the policies that he implemented.

1 Biography

1.1 Early lifeDella Genga was born in 1760 to a noble family fromLa Genga,[1] a small town in what is now the provinceof Ancona, then part of the Papal States. He was bornas the sixth of ten children to Flavio della Genga andMaria Luisa Periberti di Fabriano. He was the brotherof Filippo della Genga. He was born at the Castello dellaGenga in the territory of Spoleto.[2] He was educated atthe Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici at Rome, wherehe was ordained priest in 1783. In 1790 the attractiveand articulate della Genga attracted favourable attentionby a tactful oration commemorative of the late EmperorJoseph II.He was the uncle of Gabriele della Genga Sermattei whoin the 19th century was the only nephew of a pope to beelevated to cardinal.

1.2 Education and ordinationDella Genga studied theology at the Collegio Campanain Osimo from 1773 to 1778 and later at the Collegio Pi-ceno in Rome until 1783 when he commenced studies atthe Pontical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles. He laterreceived the subdiaconate in 1782 and then the diaconatein 1783.Della Genga was ordained to the priesthood on 14 June1783 and served as an ambassador to Switzerland.

1.3 Papal nuncio and episcopateIn 1794 Pope Pius VI made him a canon of Saint PetersBasilica,[2] and in 1793 created him Titular Archbishopof Tyre. He was consecrated in Rome in 1794 afterthe appointment and was despatched to Lucerne as theApostolic Nuncio. In 1794 he was transferred to the

nunciature at Cologne, but owing to the war had to makehis residence in Augsburg. At this time, he believed itwould be his last post and organized the construction oftombs for his mother and for himself.During the dozen or more years he spent in Germany hewas entrusted with several honourable and dicult mis-sions, which brought him into contact with the courts ofDresden, Vienna, Munich and Wrttemberg, as well aswith Napoleon I of France. It is, however, charged at onetime during this period that his nances were disordered,and his private life was not above suspicion. For examplehe was suspected of having had a liaison with the wife ofthe soldier of Swiss Guard and allegedly fathered threeillegitimate children.[3]

After theNapoleonic abolition of the States of the Church(1798), he lived for some years at the abbey ofMonticelli,solacing himself with music and with bird-shooting, pas-times which he continued even after his election as Pope.

1.4 CardinalIn 1814 della Genga was chosen to carry Pope PiusVII's congratulations to Louis XVIII of France upon hisrestoration.On 8March 1816 he was created Cardinal-Priest of SantaMaria in Trastevere and he received his red zucchettoon 11 March and his titular church on 29 April 1816.Later he was appointed as the Archpriest of the Basilicadi Santa Maria Maggiore, and appointed to the episcopalsee of Sinigaglia, which he resigned in 1818 due to healthreasons. He resigned without never having entered hisarchdiocese.[2]

On 9May 1820, Pope Pius VII gave him the distinguishedpost of Vicar-General of His Holiness for the Diocese ofRome.[4]

2 Ponticate

2.1 Papal electionMain article: Papal conclave, 1823

Pope Pius VII died in 1823 after yet another long pontif-icate that spanned over two decades. In the conclave of1823, della Genga was the candidate of the zelanti fac-tion and in spite of the active opposition of France, he was

1

2 2 PONTIFICATE

elected as the new pope by the cardinals on 28 September1823, taking the name of Leo XII.His election had been facilitated because he was thoughtto be at deaths door, but he unexpectedly rallied. Hehad even remarked about his own health to the cardinals,saying that they would be electing a dead man.[4] It wassaid in the conclave that he lifted his robes to show thecardinals a pair of swollen and ulcerated legs in order todeter them. However, this made themmore eager to electhim.[5]

Leo XII was 63 at the time of his election and fell victimto inrmities on a constant basis. Hewas tall and thin withan ascetic look with a melancholic countenance. He fellill after his coronation and surprised people with the en-durance at which he carried his work after he recovered.Leo XII devoted himself to his work and was simple inhis mode of life. He had a passion for shooting birds andwas rumored to have killed a peasant whom he arguedwith about sporting rights.[5]

The cardinal protodeacon Fabrizio Ruo crowned him asponti on 5 October 1823.

2.2 Foreign policy

Pius VIIs Secretary of State, Ercole Consalvi, who hadbeenDella Gengas rival in the conclave, was immediatelydismissed, and Pius policies rejected.[6] LeoXIIs foreignpolicy, entrusted at rst to the octogenarian Giulio Mariadella Somaglia and then to the more able Tommaso Ber-netti, negotiated certain concordats very advantageous tothe papacy. Personally most frugal, Leo XII reducedtaxes, made justice less costly, and was able to ndmoneyfor certain public improvements, yet he left the Churchsnances more confused than he had found them, and eventhe elaborate jubilee of 1825 did not really mend nancialmatters.

Papal Rome in the time of Leo XII, by Silvestr FeodosievichShchedrin

2.3 Domestic policy

Leo XIIs domestic policy was one of extreme conser-vatism: He was determined to change the condition ofsociety, bringing it back to the utmost of his power to theold usages and ordinances, which he deemed to be ad-mirable; and he pursued that object with never aggingzeal.[7] He condemned the Bible societies, and underJesuit inuence reorganised the educational system, plac-ing it entirely under priestly control through his bull Quoddivina sapientia and requiring that all secondary instruc-tion be carried out in Latin, as he required of all courtproceedings, also now entirely in ecclesiastical hands. Allcharitable institutions in the Papal States were put underdirect supervision.Laws such as that forbidding Jews to own property andallowing them only the shortest possible time in which tosell what they owned, and that requiring all Roman res-idents to listen to Catholic catechism commentary, ledmany of Romes Jews to emigrate, to Trieste, Lombardyand Tuscany.[8][9]

The results of his method of governing his states soonshowed themselves in insurrections, conspiracies, assassi-nations and rebellion, especially in Umbria, the Marchesand Romagna; the violent repression of which, by a sys-tem of espionage, secret denunciation, and wholesaleapplication of the gibbet and the galleys, left behind itto those who were to come afterwards a very terrible,rankling and long-enduring debt of party hatreds, of po-litical and social demoralisation, and worst of alla contempt for and enmity to the law, as such.[10] Ina regime that saw the division of the population intoCarbonari and Sanfedisti, he hunted down the Carbonariand the Freemasons with their liberal sympathisers.Leo XII made himself intensely unpopular with his sub-jects by constraining them to observe endless rules andregulations concerning private as well as public mat-ters. For instance, he decreed that any dressmakerwho sold low or transparent dresses would be ipso factoexcommunicated. To ensure against any possible disre-gard of this spiritual chastisement, the penalties for wear-ing the oending garments were made tangible and im-mediate, so it is unlikely that the seamstresses pious al-legiance was often put to the test.

2.4 Vaccination controversy

According to some contemporary authors such as G.SGodkin, Leo XII was also said to have prohibitedvaccination.[11] More recent scholarship has been unableto nd any ban or any suggestion of a ban by Leo XIIand his administration. Donald J. Keefe in his paperTracking the footnote[12] traced a quote by Leo XIIwhich strongly condemned vaccination to an unveriedcitation by Dr. Pierre Simon in Le Contredes Nais-sances. The response of the Papacy to the arrival of

3vaccination in Italy has been documented in Pratique dela vaccination antivariolique dans les provinces de ltatpontical au 19me sicle, an article written by Yves-Marie Berc and Jean-Claude Otteni for Revue dHistoireEcclsiastique.[13] According to Berc and Otteni, the bi-ographers and contemporaries of Leo XII do not men-tion any interdict. The authors credit the origin of themythical vaccination ban of Leo XII to the personalityof Cardinal Della Genga when he became pope in 1823.His intransigence and piety alienated liberal opinion veryquickly. His austere spirituality made him the target ofcriticisms and mocking remarks. English travelers visit-ing the peninsula and many of the diplomats establishedin Rome remarked on the severity of the ponti. Theobscurantism of the Church, the inertia of the ponticalgovernment, the ridiculous superstitions of Italian piety,the idleness and the dirtiness of the Southerners werecommonplaces stereotypes from the accounts of travel-ers to Italy.

2.5 ActivitiesLeo XII beatied a number of individuals in his pon-ticate which totaled at 15. He beatied: Angelina diMarsciano (8 March 1825), Hippolytus Galantini (29June 1825), Angelus of Gualdo Tadino (3 August 1825)and Angelus of Acri (18 December 1825). He also be-atied in 1825: Bernard Scammacca, Julian of Saint Au-gustine [14] , Alonso Rodriguez and James Grissinger. Hebeatied Imelda Lambertini (20 December 1826) andalso conrmed the cultus of Jordan of Saxony in 1826.He also beatied Helen of Poland and Magdalen Panat-tieri on 26 September 1827 as well as Giovanna Soderini(1827) andHelenDuglioli and Juana deAza in 1828. LeoXII also created Peter Damian a Doctor of the Church in1828 in addition to the formal canonization he presidedover.He collaborated with Vincent Strambi - future saint -who served as his advisor. When he was on the brinkof death in 1825, Strambi oered himself to God for thesurvival of the pope. The pope rallied from his ailment,but Strambi died.The pope also approved the Missionary Oblates of MaryImmaculate on 17 February 1826 when he gave it ocialrecognition.He held 8 consistories in which he elevated 25 new car-dinals into the cardinalate.Leo XII made himself unpopular with the people due tothe fact that he constrained them to endless rules that con-cerned private life and public aairs. He decreed that adressmaker who sold low or transparent dresses would in-cur ipso facto excommunication. The pope also deniedthe Jews the right to possess material possessions and al-lowed them the shortest time to sell their belongings. Herevived the regulations of the Middle Ages in regards tosegregation and marks for identication.[5]

3 Death and legacy

The monument to Leo XII.

On 5 February 1829, after a private audience with thenew Cardinal Secretary of State, Tommaso Bernetti, hewas suddenly taken ill and he seemed to know that his endwas near. On 8 February, he asked for and received theViaticum and was anointed. On 9 February, he lapsedinto unconsciousness and on the next morning, he died.He was buried in a monument of him in Saint PetersBasilica on 15 February 1829. His remains were trans-ferred and buried before the altar of Pope Leo I on 5 De-cember 1830.Leo XII was a man of noble character, a passion for or-der and eciency, but he lacked insight into the tempo-ral developments of his time. His rule was unpopularin Rome and in the Papal States, and by various mea-sures of his reign he diminished greatly for his successorstheir chances of solving the new problems that confrontedthem.[15]

4 See also

Cardinals created by Leo XII

List of encyclicals of Pope Leo XII

4 7 EXTERNAL LINKS

5 Notes[1] English: Hannibal Francis Clement Melchior Jerome

Nicholas Sermattei della Genga

[1] The town is now simply Genga.[2] Toke, Leslie. Pope Leo XII. The Catholic Encyclope-

dia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company,1910. 28 Aug. 2014

[3] Letters from Rome in: The New Monthly Magazine andLiterary Journal, Tom 11, pp. 468-471.

[4] Miranda, Salvador. Della Genga, Annibale, The Cardi-nals of the Holy Roman Church

[5] Pope Leo XII: Proceedings of the Conclave that led tohis election.. Pickle Publishing. Retrieved 9 February2015.

[6] Francis A. Burkle-Young, Papal Elections in the Age ofTransition, 18781922, 2000:22.

[7] Luigi Carlo Farini, Lo stato Romano, dell'anno 1815 a1850, (Turin, 1850) vol. I, p. 17, quoted by ThomasAdolphus Trollope, The Story of the Life of Pius the Ninthvol. I (1877:39f)

[8] Farini, 'eo. loc.[9] Valrie Pirie, ''The Triple Crown: An Account of the Pa-

pal Conclaves'". Pickle-publishing.com. Retrieved 2013-06-23.

[10] Trollope, p. 41.[11] Godkin, G. S. (1880). Life of Victor Emmanuel II.

Macmillan[12] Donald J. Keefe, Tracking the footnote, Fellowship

of Catholic Scholars Newsletter, Volume 9, Number 4,September 1986 p. 6-7.

[13][14] Faithful and True Translation of a Brief Memoir of the

Life and Miracles of the Saintly Brother Julian of Alcala,1610. World Digital Library.

[15] Pope Leo XII. Retrieved 24 January 2014.

6 References This article incorporates text from a publication nowin the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911).Encyclopdia Britannica (11th ed.). CambridgeUniversity Press.

7 External links Catholic-Hierarchy entry

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BiographyEarly lifeEducation and ordinationPapal nuncio and episcopateCardinal

PontificatePapal electionForeign policyDomestic policyVaccination controversyActivities

Death and legacySee alsoNotesReferencesExternal linksText and image sources, contributors, and licensesTextImagesContent license