CONSALVI, ERCOLE. – Cardinal, born in Rome on 7 June 1757, died at Anzio on 24 January 1824. He studied at the seminary of Frascati; although a deacon, he was never a priest. Thanks to his agile intelligence and personal charm, he advanced brilliantly through the curial career: he was rapporteur at the Buon Governo, a voting member of the Segnatura, assessor at the Secretariat of State, and auditor of the Rota. He was secretary of the Conclave of Venice, from which, also through his efforts, Pope Pius VII was elected (14 March 1800). After Pius VII’s return to Rome, C. was created cardinal on 20 August 1800 and then appointed Secretary of State.
C. assisted—indeed, one may say, guided—Pius VII in the political restoration of the Papal States in those provinces of “first recovery” returned to the Holy See following the Peace of Lunéville. Not the whole inheritance of the Jacobin administration was erased by C.’s skilful and prudent policy, fully aware of the impossibility, or at least the inopportuneness, of a reconstruction that would make a tabula rasa of the entire recent past: C.’s realism and his conscious opposition to abstraction led him to accept the admission of laymen into the administrations, the abolition of the privileges of corporations, and the introduction of freedom of commerce (where, moreover, the rationale was also inherited from the old Physiocratic controversies). Certainly, however, the condition of the State remained grave, above all because of its appalling financial situation.
CONSECRATION – Episcopal consecration. Roman Pontifical (first half of the 16th century) – Paris, National Library, ms. lat. 955, fol. 66v.
(photo Enc. Catt.)
CONSALVI, ERCOLE - Portrait in watercolor from life.
Rome, Museo del Risorgimento.
The tranquility of part of French public opinion was assured by the Pope’s commitment not to disturb the consciences of those who had acquired alienated ecclesiastical property. Buonaparte wished to add to the Concordat the so-called Organic Articles: the decrees of Rome were made subject to the placet; an appeal to the Council of State against abuses by the bishops was instituted; the bishops’ acts during visitations and ordinations were restricted; bishops were prohibited from holding synods or going to Rome without government permission, etc. These articles, and the non-explicit submission of the constitutional bishops, threatened the renewed religious peace; C., in order to avert this danger, suggested that they should not be intransigent. They contented themselves with the de facto reconciliation of the constitutional bishops and with the Pope’s declaration that he had had no part in, and disapproved of, the Organic Articles.
Relations between France and the Holy See nevertheless remained wavering, eventually leading to denunciations by the Holy See of violations of the concordat and to moments of dramatic conflict: Pius VII, pro bono pacis, on 17 June 1806 accepted C.’s resignation, desired by Napoleon, who saw in the cardinal a man who, beneath apparent compliance, remained firm and resolute in defending the Concordat and the sovereignty of the Papal States.
C. was among the “black cardinals,” that is, among those who refused to attend Napoleon’s illegitimate marriage to Maria Luisa in 1810; and he was exiled to Reims. He was subsequently among those who secretly urged Pius VII to denounce the Concordat of Fontainebleau of 1813. Freed in April 1814, on 20 May he was sent by the Pope to Paris to open negotiations for the restitution of the Church’s dominions, and obtained assurances from Luigi XVIII and Talleyrand, as well as in London from the chancellor, Lord Castlereagh; on 2 September he was in Vienna, where for nine months he worked, with extreme skill and the tact of a consummate diplomat, for the restitution of the Papal States to the Church. Certainly, fortunate circumstances contributed to this, because C., as the representative of a small political power, had only a secondary voice at the Congress of Vienna; nevertheless, the Legations, the Marche, and the other territories returned to the Holy See, and C. was satisfied with the great powers’ solution, even though Avignon, the Comtat Venaissin, and the section of the Ferrara legation situated on the left bank of the Po were definitively lost by the Church.
Since the time of the Congress of Vienna, C. had understood that, while attempts were made to dominate the revolution by repressing it and forcing it into silence, it overflowed through all the fissures that overly self-interested or overly accommodating hands opened for it; the most prudent course was to “regulate” and “direct” the new spirit rather than “allow oneself to 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). Thus, when he resumed the reins of the Secretariat of State upon his return to Rome, he sought to preserve whatever had been beneficial in the revolutionary-Napoleonic movement: the French commercial code was retained; the judicial power was distinguished from the executive; torture and the cord were abolished; the confrontation of witnesses in capital cases was instituted; the old fideicommissa were abolished, and restrictive rules were imposed on the creation of new ones (for example, they could concern only immovable property capable of being mortgaged, up to a value of 15,000 scudi); a general register of the public debt was instituted; the mortgage regulations remained similar to those of the Napoleonic period. State centralization and administrative uniformity, moreover, were a direct Napoleonic legacy: the legate, like the French prefect, became responsible to the Secretary of State; the bishops were also deprived of the use of the sbirraglia; personal services were taken away from the agricultural classes.
C. nevertheless remained isolated: his collaborators were mediocre or reactionary, and there was no genuine governing class to support him. Strong difficulties came from public opinion, which considered C.’s reforms too audacious, or, if attached to the enthusiasms of ardent liberalism, saw C. as an enemy. At times C. found support among those moderate liberals who adhered to papal policy out of fear of Austrian interference (C. always firmly opposed an Austrian invasion) or out of hatred for sectarian movements; but this was occasional and uncertain support.
C. M. D. H. D.
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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 the social level, the bourgeoisie in the process of formation and development in the Papal States supported C.’s policy insofar as it was anti-feudal, and above all because C. had validated the purchase of ecclesiastical property confiscated by the French. But the failure to resolve the latifundia problem and, on the political level, C.’s incomprehension of the new spirit of nationality prevented active collaboration; the proletariat, entirely lacking class consciousness, was not opposed to the papal regime as such; but C. enjoyed no sympathy from it, because the government was blamed for the low level of wages.
On the diplomatic level, C.’s activity achieved unquestionable successes; not only is his tact in the face of the Neapolitan revolution of 1820–21 noteworthy (cf. J. H. Brady, Rome and the neapolitan revolution of 1820-21, New York 1937, passim), and 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); above all, however, his ecclesiastical-concordat policy is fundamental, since, by sacrificing lesser interests, he succeeded in breaking every remnant or aspiration toward a national Church: as was rightly observed (F. Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, IV, Freiburg im Br. 1937, p. 23), the nineteenth century marks the definitive separation between the universal Church and the national Church. And the principal merit belongs to C. Finally, in the sphere of religious activity, C.’s work must not be forgotten: with the collaboration of Cardinals B. Pacca and L. Litta, he brought about the reorganization of Propaganda Fide in 1817.