LEONE XII, POPE. — Annibale Sermattei della Genga, born at the Castello della Genga, near Spoleto, on 22 August 1760, died in Rome on 10 February 1829. He studied at Osimo and Rome; ordained a priest in 1783, he was bishop of Tyre, nuncio at Lucerne and Cologne, sent in 1805 to the German Diet, then nuncio at Munich and, in 1808, at Paris. He returned to the latter city to convey the Pope’s congratulations to Louis XVIII, restored to power. A cardinal of the Order of Priests from 8 March 1816, he was bishop of Senigallia and, in 1820, vicar of Rome. He openly manifested his opposition to Consalvi’s policy, which had aroused the hostility of many cardinals whom he had kept away from power and who reproached him for adopting various administrative reforms introduced by the Revolution and the Empire concerning ecclesiastics, nobles and cities, for concluding concordats considered injurious to the rights of the Church, and for the alleged weakness he had shown toward the powers, especially Austria.
(fot. Alinari)
LEONE XII, pope — The Pope standing and blessing. Monument by G. De Fabris (1836) — Basilica of St Peter.
At the death of Pius VII, Cardinal Albani, head of the Consalvian Party supported by Metternich, communicated the Austrian veto against the election of Cardinal Severoli. The Party of the “zelanti,” mostly Italians, nevertheless succeeded, on 28 September 1823, in having another of its candidates, Cardinal della Genga, elected against the Consalvian Castiglioni. The latter replaced Consalvi with the old conservative Cardinal Della Somaglia, but showed that he was bound to no particular tendency: he sought counsel from Consalvi himself and knew how to give the Church’s life its own direction.
The programme of his pontificate was announced in the encyclical Ubi Primum of May 1824: restoration of religion, struggle against the errors threatening the faith, condemnation of sects, religious indifferentism and Bible societies. Despite opposition from the States and from a part of the Curia itself, he proclaimed the Jubilee for 1825, which was to bring about a general return to the faith, capable of overwhelming every opposition and resistance on the part of sects and political powers, and which in fact proved unexpectedly imposing. With the bull Quod Divina Sapientia he reformed education under ecclesiastical control, subsequently creating the Congregation of Studies for this purpose; he then restored the Roman College to the Jesuits and entrusted the College of Nobles to them; with Quo graviora mala he again condemned the sects.
These, however, were not the only things that caused the Pontiff concern, for he had to struggle against Gallicanism in France, Josephinism and Febronian tendencies in Austria and Germany, and the Orthodox autocracy of the Tsar. He also entered into conflict with Spain when the King, whose restoration had been celebrated and blessed by the Pope, sought to prevent him from providing for the spiritual needs of the former Spanish colonies, thereby implicitly recognizing their new political order. In 1828 he believed that, through an agreement, he had put an end to the anticlerical policy of William I of the Netherlands, but the latter attempted not to apply the convention with the support of the Belgian liberals. L. XII did not compromise himself in the conflict between the Gallicans and La Mennais, whom he regarded as guided more by the heart than by reason.
His efforts to restore order in the Papal States did not always achieve the desired end. The brigands of the Roman countryside were not subdued by Cardinal Pallotta or by Msgr. Benvenuti, who replaced him; nor did the condemnations of Targhini and Montanari and the dispatch to Romagna of Cardinal Rivarola and subsequently of Msgr. Invernizzi succeed in putting an end to the conspiracies and insurrections. L. XII sought to restore the ancien régime by removing laymen from public offices and through measures in the judicial sphere favoring ecclesiastical tribunals and in the social sphere favoring the nobility. On the other hand, he introduced many appropriate economies, reduced or abolished taxes and imposts, but was unable to prevent the worsening of the economic and financial situation, caused by the country’s poverty and partly also by the departure of wealthy Jews sometimes compromised from a political standpoint.
L. XII kept somewhat aloof from his subjects and was not very popular because of the severe economies introduced, the suppression of certain institutions unable to sustain themselves, and the imposition of barriers at inns, although the reduction of taxes and other appropriate and beneficial measures deserved greater appreciation.
Many of the final measures of his pontificate were due to Cardinal Tommaso Bernetti, who replaced Della Somaglia and heightened the anti-Austrian tone of papal policy.
BIBLI: Artaud de Montor, Histoire du pape L. XII, 2 vols., Bruxelles 1842; L. C. Farini, La Stato romano dal 1815 al 1839, I, Firenze 1833, pp. 16-25; N. Wiseman, Rinensbrance degli ultimi quattro papi, translated into Italian, Milano 1858; I, Ranieri, Mistione a Parigi di mons. Genga e del card. Consalvi (maggio 1815), in Civ. Catt., 1902, vi, pp. 272-87; G. de Grandmaison, Le Jubilé de 1825, Parigi 1910; Ch. Terlinden, Le Conclave de L. XII d'après les documents inédits, in Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, 14 (1913), pp. 272-303; U. Osiha, Il Conclave di L. XII, in Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 8 (1921), pp. 611-16; id., Tre Conclusi, ibid., 20 (1933), pp. 563-84; A. M. Ghisalberti, s. V. in Diz. del Risorg. naz., III, pp. 358-59; J. Schmidlin, Pantyschichte der neuesten Zeit, I, Monaco 1933, pp. 367-473; M. Rossi, Il Conclave di Leone XII. La Stato pontificio è l'Italia all'indomani del Congresso di Vienna, Perugia 1935; E. Vercesi, I papi del sec. XIX. Tre pontificati, L. XII, Pio VIII, Gregorio XVI, Torino 1936, pp. 19-114; J. Leflon, La crise révolutionnaire (1785-1846), Parigi 1949, pp. 379-409. Fausto Fonzi