CONSALVI, ERCOLE. - Cardinal, b. in Rome on 7 June 1757, d. at Anzio on 24 Jan. 1824. He studied at the seminary of Frascati; a deacon, he was never a priest. Through his agile intelligence and his charm he moved brilliantly up the curial career: he was ponente at the Buon Governo, votante at the Segnatura, assessor at the Secretariat of State, auditor of the Rota. He was secretary of the Conclave of Venice, from which, thanks also to his efforts, Pope Pius VII emerged elected (14 March 1800). After Pius VII's return to Rome, C. was created cardinal on 20 Aug. 1800 and then appointed secretary of State.
C. assisted, indeed, one might say, guided Pius VII in the political restoration of the Papal State in those provinces of the "first recovery" restored to the Holy See following the Peace of Lunéville. Not the whole legacy of the Jacobin administration was erased by C.'s able and shrewd policy, he being well aware of the impossibility, or at least the inopportuneness, of a rebuilding that sought to make a tabula rasa of the entire recent past: C.'s realism, his conscious anti-abstractness, led him to accept the admission of laymen into the administrations, the abolition of the privileges of the corporations, the introduction of freedom of commerce (where, moreover, the motive is also inherited from the old physiocratic polemics). Certainly, however, the conditions of the State remained grave, above all because of the frightful financial situation.
A political-diplomatic temperament rather than a mystical-ascetic one, he understood how the revival of the Church in France and elsewhere could come about only through delicate and laborious negotiations with the world that had emerged from the revolution; C. did not want and could not sacrifice to it any theological or canonical stronghold of the Church, but only what was ephemeral and negotiable: he was, as has been said, flexible in non-essential matters. The fruit of his policy was the Concordat with Buonaparte of 15 July 1801, on the basis of which the Church was able to regain in part, through the free and public exercise of the Catholic religion and the canonical appointment of bishops by the Pope in the ancient forms, the positions lost during the revolutionary storm. A step of great consequence for Catholicism derived from it, even if it was not recognized as the official cult, as the Curia would have wished, and even if Buonaparte had treated the matter, moved as he was by a conception of religion as an instrumentum regni (he saw in it the means of giving peace and prosperity to the State), if not with many reservations, at least not with a complete will to respect—
carry out the commitments undertaken. The tranquillity of part of French public opinion was ensured by the Pope's commitment not to disturb the consciences of the possessors of alienated ecclesiastical property. Bonaparte wished to add to the Concordat the so-called organic articles: the decrees of Rome are subject to the placet, an appeal to the Council of State against the abuses of bishops is instituted, the acts of bishops in visitations and ordinations are limited, the holding of synods or going to Rome without permission of the government is prohibited, etc. These articles and the not explicit submission of the constitutional bishops threatened the renewed religious peace; C., in order to avoid this danger, suggested not being intransigent; satisfaction was taken in the de facto reconciliation of the constitutional bishops, and in the Pope's declaration that he had had no part in and disapproved of the organic articles.
Relations between France and the Holy See nonetheless remained oscillating, until however they arrived at the Holy See's denunciations against the violations of the concordat and at moments of dramatic clash: Pius VII, pro bono pacis, on 17 June 1806 accepted the resignation of C. desired by Napoleon, who saw in the cardinal a man who, beneath apparent compliances, was firm and resolute in the defense of the Concordat and of the sovereignty of the Papal State.
C. was among the "black cardinals," that is, among those who refused to attend the illegitimate marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise in 1810; and he was exiled to Reims. Then he was among those who secretly urged Pius VII to denounce the Concordat of Fontainebleau of 1813. Freed in Apr. 1814, on 20 May he was sent by the Pope to Paris to open negotiations on the restitution to the Church of its domains and obtained assurances from Louis XVIII and from Talleyrand as well as in London from the chancellor Lord Castlereagh; on 2 Sept. he was in Vienna where for nine months he worked, with extreme skill and with the tact of a diplomat of the first rank, for the restitution to the Church of the Papal State. To be sure, fortunate circumstances contributed to this, because C., as the representative of a small political power, had a secondary voice at the Congress of Vienna; in any case the Legations, the Marches and the other territories returned to the Holy See, and C. was satisfied with the solution of the great powers, even if Avignon, the Comtat Venaissin and the section of the legation of Ferrara situated on the left bank of the Po were definitively lost to the Church.
Since the time of the Congress of Vienna C. had understood that while an attempt was being made to dominate the revolution by repressing it and forcing it into silence, it overflowed through all the cracks that hands too interested or too complaisant opened for it; the more prudent course was to "regulate" and "direct" the new spirit rather than "let oneself be carried away by it" (H. Consalvi, Mémoires, edited by J. Crétineau-Joly, I, 2nd ed., Paris 1866, p. 23, and I. Rinieri, Corrispondenza inedita dei card. C. e Pacca nel tempo del Congresso di Vienna, Turin 1903, p. 736). Hence, having resumed the reins of the Secretariat of State upon his return to Rome, he sought to preserve what good the revolutionary-Napoleonic movement had had: the French commercial code was retained, the judicial power was distinguished from the executive, torture and the rope were abolished, the confrontation of witnesses in capital cases was instituted, the old fideicommissa were abolished and restrictive rules were imposed in the creation of new ones (for example, only on immovable property susceptible of mortgage for the value of 15,000 scudi), a general register of the public debt was instituted, the mortgage regulation remained similar to the Napoleonic one; state centralization, moreover, and administrative uniformity are the direct Napoleonic inheritance: the legate, like the French prefect, became responsible before the Secretary of State; furthermore, the use of hired thugs was taken away from the bishops; personal services were taken away from the agricultural classes.
C. nonetheless remained an isolated figure: his collaborators were mediocre or reactionary, and there was lacking a true ruling class to back him. Strong difficulties came from public opinion, which found C.'s reforms too audacious, or, if it was bound to the enthusiasms of an ardent liberalism, saw in C. an enemy. At times C. found support in those moderate liberals who adhered to papal policy out of fear of Austrian interference (C. always firmly opposed the invasion of Austria) or out of hatred for sectarian movements: but it was an occasional and uncertain support.
C. M. D. H. D.
I grandi di me, non, ed io, per il suo del
regolo, non ciano Napoleone che va
Vento, a due a V. C. le ottime
nuovo della salute del V. D. H. e quello
di S. M. D. H. D. D. D. D. D. D. D.
proprio, non a C. C. D. D. D. D. D. D.
S. M. D. H. D. D. D. D. D. D. D.
V. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D.
(phot. Enc. Catt.)
CONSALVI, ERCOLE - Autograph letter (18 Nov. 1822).
Vatican Archives, Secretariat of State, Rubr. 242.
On a social level, the bourgeoisie in the process of formation and development in the Papal State supported C.'s policy insofar as it was anti-feudal and above all in order to have C. validate the acquisition of the ecclesiastical properties confiscated by the French. But the failure to solve the problem of large landed estates and, on a political level, C.'s lack of understanding of the new spirit of nationality, prevented an active collaboration; the proletariat, absolutely devoid of class consciousness, was not opposed to the pontifical regime as such; but C. had no sympathy from it, because the government was accused of the meagerness of wages.
On a diplomatic level, C.'s activity obtained undoubted successes; not only is his tactfulness in the face of the Neapolitan revolution of 1820-21 worthy of note (cf. J. H. Brady, Rome and the neapolitan revolution of 1820-21, New York 1937, passim); in the face of Metternich's violent and intransigent counsels (cf. C. van Duerm, Correspondance du card. Hercule C. avec le Prince Clément de Metternich, Louvain-Brussels 1899, pp. 236-37); but above all his ecclesiastical-concordatory policy is fundamental, in which he succeeded, by sacrificing minor interests, in breaking every remnant or aspiration of a national Church: as was rightly observed (F. Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, IV, Freiburg im Br. 1937, p. 23), the 19th century marks the definitive separation between the universal Church and the national Church. And the principal merit belongs to C. In the field of religious activity, finally, the work of C. must not be forgotten, which, with the collaboration of Cardinals B. Pacca and L. Litta, led in 1817 to the reorganization of Propaganda Fide.
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Massimo Petrocchi