GREGORY XVI, POPE. - Bartolomeo Alberto
Cappellari, born in Belluno on 18 Sept. 1765 to the noble
Giovanni Battista and Giulia Cesa-Pagani, died in Rome
on 10 June 1846. Of quick and lively intelligence,
reflective and simple in spirit, he soon demonstrated an
austere, firm, and tenacious temperament, profound
senses of convinced and evangelical goodness and reli-
giosity, and a marked inclination for studies and learned
speculation.
The monastic profession of his sister Caterina among the
Benedictines of S. Gervasio, and the encouraging words
of Canon Giovanni Carrera, his educator, led him at the age
of eighteen to enter the Camaldolese monastery of S. Michele
in Murano (1783), taking the religious name of Mauro.
After making his solemn profession on 23 Aug. 1786 and
being ordained priest the following year, he became a teacher
of philosophy and sciences in 1790. He successfully defended
in public disputation a thesis on papal infallibility to qualify
as a reader of theology, and was entrusted by the Holy Office
in Venice with the task of reviewing works to be published.
At the age of thirty, on 5 Aug. 1795, Don Mauro accompanied
as a companion to Rome, to S. Gregorio al Celio and S. Romualdo,
the procurator general of the Order. The sad events of the
Jacobin occupation led him to publish, dedicated to the martyr
Pius VI: *Il trionfo della Santa Fede e della Chiesa contra gli
assalti dei novatori, combattuti e respinti con le stesse loro armi*
(Venice 1799), a weighty apologetic work and a timely act of faith
in the imminent and inevitable victories of the papacy and of
Catholicism.
Abbot of S. Michele in Murano in 1805, procurator general
in 1807, despite the ravages of Napoleonic persecution he was
able, with the help of his confrere Placido Zurla, to prevent the
dissolution of the Camaldolese communities in Venice and Padua.
In 1814, Cardinal Fontana, with the support of Pius VII, recalled
him to Rome, where he soon received appointments as consultant
to various Congregations, as examiner of bishops, overseer of
certain universities and institutes of higher learning, and reviewer
of books of the Eastern Church, while declining insistent offers
of the episcopal sees of Zante and Tivoli in order to devote
himself entirely to the revival of his Order, of which he became
vicar general in 1823.
Meanwhile the times were maturing: highly esteemed by
Leo XII, admired by scholars, well-versed in affairs and in the
mechanisms of the Curia, pious, learned, and indefatigable,
he was created cardinal in pectore by the same Pontiff on
21 March 1825 and published on 13 March of the following year.
He then readily assumed the prefecture of Propaganda Fide, where,
owing to the relaxed decadence of the previous century and the
disruption and stagnation caused by the Revolution, everything
had to be rebuilt both in Rome and in the mission territories.
He distinguished himself there by apostolic zeal and energetic
action, elegantly resolving even difficult and long-standing issues,
such as that of the Dutch Concordat (1827) or the appointment
of a Catholic metropolitan for the Armenians (1829).
Thus, from the difficult and protracted Conclave that opened
with the vacancy of Pius VIII (d. 30 Nov. 1830), amid conflicting
tendencies shrewdly exploited by the powers and threatening
rumblings of revolutionary disorder in Europe and central Italy,
Cappellari was elected pope on 12 Feb. 1831 with 32 votes out
of 41, choosing the name Gregory XVI, in memory of Gregory VII,
who had stood as the “medieval champion of the liberty of the
Church,” whose footsteps he intended to follow in order to restore
after several centuries that concordant wave of fruitful devotion
and devout obedience of the episcopate, the clergy, and the faithful
which was to form the very core of the Church’s present greatness.
“A wonderful power has arisen as if by magic,” wrote Eichendorff,
“and it is the affirmation of Catholic opinion.”
As regards his teaching, the difficult problems arising from the
succession and clash of opposing political regimes were resolved
by the Pope through the natural development of prudent ecclesiastical
practice. Without entering into the merits of different systems of
public order or taking principle from legitimism or progressivism,
he declared himself ready to deal, for the exclusive safeguarding
of spiritual interests and the good of souls, with whoever in fact
held political power. He enjoined upon the hierarchy and the
faithful of every nation obedience to the existing regime, in order
to maintain public tranquility without prejudice to the rights of
the Church or to pending juridical questions between the contending
parties (*encyclical Sollicitudo ecclesiarum*, 7 Aug. 1831). Thus
he also unraveled the knot of liberal equivocation; he exposed its
pitfalls by striking at the roots of the philosophy of common sense
and the theory of liberating regenerations in the encyclicals *Mirari
vos* (15 Aug. 1832) and *Singulari nos* (25 June 1834). Nor were
less well-founded and timely the reservations expressed regarding
the writings of Bonald and De Maistre, too inclined to depreciate
nature and reason, while condemning the anti-intellectualist fideism
of Abbot Bautain (*apostolic letter Accepimus*, 20 Dec. 1834).
Next came the false doctrines of Hermes, aimed at reducing
faith to an empty romantic sentimentalism devoid of rational
content and at misrepresenting the charismatic work of grace
and the real faculty of human free will (*apostolic letter Dum
acerbissima*, 26 Sept. 1835). But the culminating document
remains that in which Gregory XVI forcefully opposed the infamous
slave trade, striking it definitively in all its aspects. The moving
apostolic letter on this subject, dated 3 Dec. 1839, had such an
echo throughout the civilized world that three years later the
principal European powers concluded a special treaty for its
suppression: it was the death blow to a barbarous custom and a
shameful commerce, already repeatedly condemned and prohibited
by several popes.
Such solicitude of Gregory for the “savages,” that is, for those
primitive peoples whose members the Pope insisted should be
regarded, in the light of divine fatherhood, as all members of the
human family, equal, brothers, and free—“men” like any others
and not “impure animals,” as the pseudo-science of naturalism
and evolutionary sociologism was just then preparing to do—could
not be separated, in the heart of the former Prefect of Propaganda
Fide, from a particular love for the missions. As Sylvain aptly
observes, Gregory “consecrated every moment of his pontificate
to the development of Catholic missions,” and “no other of his
many and grave concerns was ever able to distract him from so
glorious and important an objective.” Indeed, in this too, as a
worthy son of St. Romuald, Gregory may be considered a far-sighted
pioneer of the present successes of the missions throughout the
globe. To the rapid strengthening of missionary penetration
among pagans as well as heterodox, penetration
of that full ecclesiastical liberty which, with regard to the most
free and vigorous Catholic expansion in North America, led him
to exclaim: “In no part of the world do I feel so much pope as
in the United States.”
Promptly sealed by the blood of new martyrs, especially in the Far East, and by the expansion of missionary stations in Abyssinia, Egypt, Algeria, India, the Americas and Oceania, as well as in northern and eastern Europe, a worthy counterpart was the rise and flourishing of special institutes aimed at the formation of missionaries and the gathering of the necessary economic means. Thus, alongside the full and fervent revival of old and new religious families, even in a missionary sense, the meritorious initiatives of the work for the Propagation of the Faith in Lyons, of the Holy Childhood and of the Leopoldine Society in Vienna were recalled. Nor were there lacking from the Pope’s side prudent measures designed to counter the work of Protestants, to reorganise and strengthen the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda and its college, and to establish in mission lands special seminaries for the indigenous clergy. The establishment of no fewer than thirty-six new apostolic vicariates, the foundation of fifteen new dioceses and the appointment of ninety-five bishops, all by decree of Propaganda, are evident proof of the well-deserved reward gathered by G. in this field of his uniform pontifical activity.
Equally directed to the highest and purest religious ends was his ecclesiastical government in all sectors. His solicitous care for the concordant union of the episcopate and for the better formation and discipline of the clergy was joined to his constant efforts for the rebirth of religious Orders and Congregations after the revolutionary storm, for the establishment and strengthening of new foundations, especially those intended for the education of youth and for social assistance. He canonised five saints (1839), among them St Alphonsus de’ Liguori and St Peter of Alcantara, and carried out some beatifications, recognising the ancient and constant cult of thirty-four servants of God. He extended to the universal Church the Office and Mass of St Aloysius Gonzaga and desired the introduction of the cause of the apostle of children, John Baptist de la Salle. Important norms were issued for the observance of liturgical prescriptions and for a return to the genuine sources and forms of sacred music. Devoutly devoted to the Virgin, he became a vigorous promoter of the preparatory acts for the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Suffice it to recall the interest shown by G. in clarifying the prodigious circumstances of the conversion of the Jew Ratisbonne; the indulgences granted to the faithful devoted to the Miraculous Medal; the introduction of the legitimate *immaculata* into the preface of the Mass proper to the feast of the Conception; and the addition of the invocation *Regina sine labe originali concepta* to the Litany of Loreto. Besides various notable reforms in the structure of the organs of the Curia, such as the renewal of the body of Apostolic Protonotaries, he held fifty consistories, delivering allocutions almost always noteworthy for zeal and firmness. He held the decorum and prestige of the Sacred College in the highest regard: fortunate in the choice of the eighty-two cardinals he created (consider, for instance, the palaeographer Malatesta, the polyglot Mezzofanti, the most pious shepherd Mastai-Ferretti), in every act he availed himself of the counsel and collaboration of the most competent cardinals of the Curia. New energies and abilities he brought to the episcopate by consecrating no fewer than seven hundred and fifty-five patriarchs, archbishops and bishops.
Equally intent on the exclusive safeguarding of the moral and spiritual rights of the immense flock entrusted to him, and always immune from any temporalistic concern or influence, his prudent and far-sighted ecclesiastical “policy” was demonstrated in the difficult and arduous relations with the various States. This policy, which could make effective use of the ever more concordant, coordinated and compliant pastoral strength of the vast majority of the episcopate and clergy of every land, found on the other hand new and notable support and knew how to avail itself of the growing civic-social influence of the masses of the faithful upon the public opinion of the respective nations.
Assisted and seconded by direct collaborators such as a Bernetti and a Lambruschini, G. thus succeeded in upholding the prestige of the Church and the Holy See on every occasion, sometimes overcoming, sometimes preparing the overcoming of the gravest and most manifold difficulties.
In Piedmont, long-standing disputes were settled by the re-establishment of the nunciature and the resolution of questions relating to civil status, the suppression of tithes in Sardinia, the taxes for the clergy and ecclesiastical immunities. Vigilant and agile was the line of conduct followed by the Pope in the face of the suspicious indifference first, then the interested encroachment, of the July Monarchy, which was in substance too sceptical to wish to appear persecutory, while among those Catholics the admonition of Ozanam prevailed: “Renounce political spirit in favour of social spirit.” The Holy See encouraged healthy neo-Guelph tendencies there and supported the movement for freedom of teaching; the generous sacrifice of the Jesuits found some compensation in the tacit return of the Benedictines and Dominicans. A happy balance of constructive compromise was achieved in Belgium, where through the skilful and able work of the nuncio Pecci even the thorny controversy over examination boards was overcome.
In the Iberian peninsula, amid the complications of dynastic conflicts turning into ideological clashes, between regalist absolutism at work and rising laicist liberalism, with widespread persecutions and vexations, the Church suffered as usual the brunt of everything. Until, thanks to G.’s firmness in safeguarding principles and his flexibility in seizing every opportune contingency, in Spain, after the defeat of Espartero, a new concordat arrangement was set in motion (1843–45), and in Portugal a climate of evident pacifying détente was outlined, receiving in Rome the Carreira and sending to Lisbon Monsignor Capaccini.
Not so fortunate was the case in Switzerland, where in the political conflict between federalists, faithful to the ancient autonomy of the cantons, and radicals with centralising and unifying tendencies, a bitter religious controversy was inserted, the former striving to safeguard the liberties of the Church, the latter tending to laicist and rationalist oppression. Supported by the force of right and the comfort of G., led by Leu and Meyer, the Catholics fought victoriously from 1832 against the attempt to organise the Swiss Church on national lines and autonomous from the Holy See. But the radicals, defeated on the plane of democratic legality, resorted to the law of force: on 11 December 1845 the defensive league of the Sonderbund arose, and thus the hostilities of civil war were opened.
While in Austria signs of an impending easing of tensions can be noted (1833–44) through the gradual and practical abandonment of Josephinist legislation, with the consequent renewed acceptance of Rome’s influence, relations with Prussia necessarily deteriorated, the effort to achieve confessional unification of the state intensifying through campaigns against mixed marriages and through covert maneuvers aimed at producing a syncretistic synthesis of the various confessions. Upon the arrest of several bishops and prelates, GREGORY XVI promptly responded by reaffirming the sound directives of PIUS VIII (the brief *Litteris*, 25 March 1830) and condemning the teachings of Hermes. Then arose in the persons of DROSTE-VISCHERING and DUNIN admirable champions of truth and the Faith, against whose arrest the Pope raised his voice (allocutions of 10 December 1837, 13 September 1838, and 8 July 1839), stirring up a wave of enthusiasm and indignation not only in the country but throughout the civilized world. More prudent than Frederick William III, his successor—who was the fourth of that name—realized that instead of unity, irreparable fractures threatened the fabric of the state. From 1840 onward, he therefore altered his policy, released imprisoned pastors, and by creating a special Catholic section within the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs (1841) prepared the way for thirty years of religious peace in the country.
As for Catholic England, Scotland, and Ireland, GREGORY XVI’s action was no less vigorous and intense, though deliberately confined to the purely religious sphere, aiming more at breaking down prejudices and laws that denied those faithful the traditional liberties enjoyed by all other citizens than at risking diplomatic negotiations that might lead to predictable setbacks.