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Rh skill in the conduct of a mission to the court of Naples won him the esteem of Benedict XIV., who appointed him one of his secretaries and canon of St Peter's. In 1758 he was raised to the prelature, and in 1766 to the treasurership of the apostolic chamber by Clement XIII. Those who chafed under his conscientious economies cunningly induced Clement XIV. to create him cardinal-priest of San Onofrio on the 26th of April 1773, a promotion which rendered him for the time innocuous. In the four months' conclave which followed the death of Clement XIV., Spain, France and Portugal at length dropped their objection to Braschi, who was after all one of the more moderate opponents of the anti-Jesuit policy of the previous pope, and he was elected to the vacant see on the 15th of February 1775.

His earlier acts gave fair promise of liberal rule and reform in the defective administration of the papal states. He showed discrimination in his benevolences, reprimanded Potenziani, the governor of Rome, for unsuppressed disorders, appointed a council of cardinals to remedy the state of the finances and relieve the pressure of imposts, called to account Nicolo Bischi for the expenditure of moneys intended for the purchase of grain, reduced the annual disbursements by the suppression of several pensions, and adopted a system of bounties for the encouragement of agriculture. The circumstances of his election, however, involved him in difficulties from the outset of his pontificate. He had received the support of the ministers of the Crowns and the anti-Jesuit party upon a tacit understanding that he would continue the action of Clement, by whose brief Dominus ac redemptor (1773) the dissolution of the Society of Jesus had been pronounced. On the other hand the zelanti, who believed him secretly inclined towards Jesuitism, expected from him some reparation for the alleged wrongs of the previous reign. As a result of these complications Pius was led into a series of half measures which gave little satisfaction to either party: although it is perhaps largely due to him that the order was able to escape shipwreck in White Russia and Silesia; at but one juncture did he even seriously consider its universal re-establishment, namely in 1792, as a bulwark against revolutionary ideas. Besides facing dissatisfaction with this temporizing policy, Pius met with practical protests tending to the limitation of papal authority. To be sure “Febronius,” the chief German literary exponent of the old Gallican ideas, was himself led (not without scandal) to retract; but his positions were adopted in Austria. Here the social and ecclesiastical reforms undertaken by Joseph II. and his minister Kaunitz touched the supremacy of Rome so nearly that in the hope of staying them Pius adopted the exceptional course of visiting Vienna in person. He left Rome on the 27th of February 1782, and, though magnificently received by the emperor, his mission proved a fiasco; he was, however, able a few years later to curb those German archbishops who, in 1786 at the Congress at Ems, had shown a tendency towards independence. In Naples difficulties necessitating certain concessions in respect of feudal homage were raised by the minister Tannucci, and more serious disagreements arose with Leopold I. and Scipione de' Ricci, bishop of Pistoia and Prato, upon the questions of reform in Tuscany; but Pius did not think fit to condemn the offensive decrees of the synod of Pistoia (1786) till nearly eight years had elapsed. At the outbreak of the French Revolution Pius was compelled to see the old Gallican Church suppressed, the pontifical and ecclesiastical possessions in France confiscated and an effigy of himself burnt by the populace at the Palais Royal. The murder of the republican agent, Hugo Basseville, in the streets of Rome (January 1793) gave new ground of offence; the papal court was charged with complicity by the French Convention; and Pius threw in his lot with the league against France. In 1796 Napoleon invaded Italy, defeated the papal troops and occupied Ancona and Loreto. Pius sued for peace, which was granted at Tolentino on the 19th of February 1797; but on the 28th of December, of that year, in a riot created by some Italian and French revolutionists, General Duphot of the French embassy was killed and a new pretext furnished for invasion. General Berthier marched to Rome, entered it unopposed on the 13th of February 1798, and, proclaiming a republic, demanded of the pope the renunciation of his temporal authority. Upon his refusal he was taken prisoner, and on the 10th of 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 by way of Parma, Piacenza, Turin and Grenoble to the citadel of Valence, where he died six weeks later, on the 29th of August, 1799. Pius VII. succeeded him.

The name of Pius VI. is associated with many and often unpopular attempts to revive the splendour of Leo X. in the promotion of art and public works—the words “Munificentia Pii VI. P. M.” graven in all parts of the city, giving rise amongst his impoverished subjects to such satire as the insertion of a minute loaf in the hands of Pasquin with that inscription beneath it. He is best remembered in connexion with the establishment of the museum of the Vatican, begun at his suggestion by his predecessor, and with an unpractical and expensive attempt to drain the Pontine marshes.


 * Zopffel and Benrath, “Pius VI.,” in Herzog Hauck, Realencyklopädie, 3rd ed., vol. xv. pp. 441–451 (Leipzig, 1904, with elaborate bibliography); F. Nielsen, History of the Papacy in the 19th Century, vol. i. chap. vii. (London, 1906); J. Gendry, Pie VI. sa vie, son pontificat, d'apres les archives vaticanes et de nombreux documents inédits (2 vols., Paris, 1907).

(Luigi Barnaba Chiaramonti), pope from 1800 to 1823, the son of Count Scipione Chiaramonti and the deeply religious Countess Ghini, was born at Cesena on the 14th of August 1740 (not 1742). After studying at Ravenna, at the age of sixteen he entered the Benedictine monastery of St Mary in his native town: here he was known as Gregorio. Almost immediately he was sent by his superiors to Padua and to Rome for a further course of studies in theology. He then held various teaching appointments in the colleges of his order at Parma and at Rome. He was created an abbot of his order by his relative Pius VI., who also appointed him bishop of Tivoli on the 16th of December 1782, and on the 14th of February 1785, because of excellent conduct of office, raised him to the cardinalate and the see of Imola. At the death of Pius VI. the conclave met at Venice on the 30th of November 1799, with the result that Chiaramonti, the candidate of the French cardinal-archbishop Maury, who was most skilfully supported by the secretary of the conclave Ercole Consalvi, was elected pope on the 14th of March 1800. He was crowned on the 21st of that month; in the following July he entered Rome, on the 11th of August appointed Consalvi cardinal-deacon and secretary of state, and busied himself with administrative reforms.

His attention was at once directed to the ecclesiastical anarchy of France, where, apart from the broad schism on the question of submission to the civil constitution of the clergy, discipline had been so far neglected that a large proportion of the churches, were closed, dioceses existed without bishops or with more than one, Jansenism and clerical marriage were on the increase, and indifference or hostility widely prevailed amongst the people. Encouraged by Napoleon's desire for the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in France, Pius negotiated the celebrated concordat, which was signed at Paris on the 15th of July and ratified by Pius on the 14th of August 1801 (see ). The importance of this agreement was, however, considerably lessened by the “articles organiques” appended to it by the French government on the 8th of April 1802. In 1804 Napoleon opened negotiations to secure at the pope's hands, his formal consecration as emperor. After some hesitation Pius was induced to perform the ceremony at Notre Dame and to extend his visit to Paris for four months; but in return for these favours he was, able to obtain from Napoleon merely one or two minor concessions. Pius, who arrived in Rome on the 16th of May 1805, gave to the college of cardinals a rose-coloured report of his experiences; but disillusionment was rapid. Napoleon soon began to disregard the Italian concordat of 1803, and himself decreed the dissolution of the marriage of his brother Jerome with Miss Patterson of Baltimore. The irritation between France and the Vatican increased so rapidly that on the 2nd of February 1808 Rome was