Pope Gregory XVI (Latin: Gregorius PP. XVI; Italian: Gregorio XVI; born Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari; 18 September 1765 – 1 June 1846) was head of the Catholic Church and leader of the Papal States from 2 February 1831 to his death in June 1846. He had adopted the name Mauro upon entering the religious order of the Camaldolese. He is the most recent pope to take the pontifical name "Gregory", the last to govern the Papal States for the whole duration of his pontificate, and the most recent not to have been a bishop when elected.
Born in Belluno, Cappellari joined the order of Camaldolese when he was eighteen. Ordained as a priest in 1787, he was a teacher of both philosophy and theology. Cappellari was made a cardinal, and, in 1831, he was elected as pope, taking the papal name Gregory XVI. A staunch defender of traditional doctrine against new ideas, he worked to protect the Papal States from attacks by Italian patriotic movements. His pontificate saw a renewed commitment to missionary work overseas. In his 1839 papal brief In supremo apostolatus, Pope Gregory XVI condemned both the slave trade and the continuance of the institution of slavery. He died of erysipelas in June 1846.
Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari was born at Belluno in the Republic of Venice, on 18 September 1765, as the last of five children, to a local Italian lower noble family, notable since the 16th century, aggregated to the local Nobility Council in 1670 and traditionally linked to liberal professions but not to the consecrated life. He was baptized at the parish of Bolzano Bellunese by his uncle Antonio Capellari. His parents were from a small village named Pesariis, in Friuli. His father, Giovanni Battista Capellari, was a notary. His mother, Giulia Cesa was a daughter of a notary. At the age of eighteen, Bartolomeo Cappellari joined the order of the Camaldolese (part of the Benedictine monastic family) and entered the Monastery of San Michele in Murano, near Venice. He was ordained a priest in 1787. As a Camaldolese monk, Cappellari rapidly gained distinction for his theological and linguistic skills, and was assigned to teach philosophy and theology at San Michele in 1787, at the age of 22.
In 1790, at the age of 25, he was appointed censor librorum for his Order, as well as for the Holy Office at Venice. He went to Rome in 1795 and in 1799 published a polemic against the Italian Jansenists titled II Trionfo della Santa Sede ("The Triumph of the Holy See"), which passed through various editions in Italy and was translated into several European languages. In 1800, he became a member of the Academy of the Catholic Religion, founded by Pope Pius VII (1800–1823), to which he contributed memoirs on theological and philosophical questions. In 1805, at the age of 40, he was appointed abbot of the Monastery of San Gregorio on Rome's Caelian Hill.
When the army of the French Emperor Napoleon took Rome and arrested and deported Pius VII to France in 1809, Cappellari fled to Murano, where he taught in the Monastery of St. Michele of his Order, where he had first become a monk. From there he and a group of monks moved their little college to Padua in 1814. After Napoleon's final defeat, the Congress of Vienna re-established the sovereignty of the Papal States over central Italy and Cappellari was called back to Rome to assume the post of vicar general of the Camaldolese Order. He was then appointed as Counsellor to the Inquisition, and later promoted to be Consultor (29 February 1820) and then, on 1 October 1826, Prefect of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide ("Propagation of the Faith"), which dealt with all missionary work outside of the Spanish Empire, including missions to the non-Catholic states in Europe. Twice he was offered a bishopric and twice he refused.
On 21 March 1825, Cappellari was created cardinal in pectore (published 13 March 1826) by Pope Leo XII, and shortly afterwards he was asked to negotiate a concordat to safeguard the rights of Catholics in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, a diplomatic task which he completed successfully. He also negotiated a peace on behalf of Armenian Catholics with the Ottoman Empire. He publicly condemned the Polish revolutionaries, who he thought were seeking to undermine Russian Tsar Nicholas I's efforts to support the Catholic royalist cause in France by forcing him to divert his troops to suppress the uprising in Poland.
Cappellari had never travelled outside Italy and was most familiar with Venice and Rome. He spoke Italian and Latin fluently, but no other European languages, and did not understand European politics. However, he was proficient in Armenian, and Haruti'iwn Awgerian (Pascal Aucher)'s 1827 Venice edition of works attributed to Severian of Gabala and translated into Armenian was dedicated to him.
On 2 February 1831, after a fifty-day conclave, Cappellari was unexpectedly chosen to succeed Pope Pius VIII (1829–30). His election was influenced by the fact that the cardinal considered the most papabile, Giacomo Giustiniani, was vetoed by King Ferdinand VII of Spain. There then arose a deadlock between the other two major candidates, Emmanuele de Gregorio and Bartolomeo Pacca. What finally drove the cardinals to make a decision was a message from the government of Parma notifying them that revolt was about to break out in the northern Papal States. To resolve the impasse, the cardinals turned to Cappellari, but it took eighty-three ballots for the canonically required two-thirds majority to be reached.
At the time of election, Cardinal Cappellari was not yet a bishop; he is the most recent man to be elected pope prior to his episcopal consecration. He was consecrated as bishop by Bartolomeo Pacca, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia and Velletri and dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals, with Pietro Francesco Galleffi, Cardinal Bishop of Porto e Santa Rufina and sub-dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals, and Tommasso Arezzo, Cardinal Bishop of Sabina, acting as co-consecrators.
The choice of Gregory XVI as his regnal name was influenced by the fact that he had been abbot of the Monastery of San Gregorio on the Coelian Hill for more than twenty years, and in honour of Gregory XV, the founder of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. The Monastery of San Gregorio was the same abbey from which Pope Gregory I had dispatched missionaries to England in 596.
The revolution of 1830, which overthrew the House of Bourbon, had just inflicted a severe blow on the Catholic royalist party in France. Almost the first act of the new French government was to seize Ancona, thus throwing Italy, and particularly the Papal States, into a state of confusion and political upheaval. Gregory issued a proclamation on 9 February 1831, one week after his election, expressing good will towards his subjects. In the course of the struggle that ensued, the Pope found it necessary more than once to call in Austrian troops to fight the red-shirted republicans engaged in a guerrilla campaign. The conservative administration of the Papal States postponed their promised reforms after a series of bombings and assassination attempts. The replacement of Tommaso Bernetti by Luigi Lambruschini as Cardinal Secretary of State in 1836 did nothing to appease the situation.
In the northern territories, the leaders of the revolt were middle-class gentry opposed to the general inefficiency of the government.
Governance of the papal states
Some authors from a much later period, publishing accounts without any verifiable proof, claim that Gregory XVI and Cardinal Lambruschini opposed basic technological innovations such as gas lighting and railways, believing that they would promote commerce and increase the power of the bourgeoisie, leading to demands for liberal reforms which would undermine the monarchical power of the Pope over central Italy. Gregory XVI is believed by some to have banned railways in the Papal States, with apocryphal accounts claiming he called them chemins d'enfer ("road to hell", a play on the French for railroad, chemin de fer, literally "iron road") - however, there is no document or public statement from the Pope banning or saying anything of the sort. Evidence suggests that railway projects were just postponed for purely economic reasons, as the papal territory was mountainous, making railroads more expensive than in other countries, in addition to the need to import iron and coal from abroad, which at the time would have crippled state finances. Only years later, already under Pius IX, with the increase in global production and supply of commodities, did imports become viable for the state budget and railways were built.