Pope Pius VI (Italian: Pio VI; born Count Angelo Onofrio Melchiorre Natale Giovanni Antonio called Giovanni Angelo or Giannangelo Braschi, 25 December 1717 – 29 August 1799) was head of the Catholic Church and leader of the Papal States from 15 February 1775 to his death in August 1799.
Born in Cesena, he was elected Pope in the 1774–1775 conclave. Pius VI condemned the French Revolution and the persecution of the Catholic Church in France that resulted from it. French troops commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Papal army and occupied the Papal States in 1796. In 1798, upon his refusal to renounce his temporal power, Pius was taken prisoner and transported to France. He died eighteen months later in Valence. His reign of more than twenty-four years is the fifth-longest in papal history. He was also the longest-serving pope of the Papal States.
Giovanni Angelo Braschi was born in Cesena on Christmas Day in 1717 as the eldest of eight children to Count Marco Aurelio Tommaso Braschi and Anna Teresa. His grandmother was Cornelia Zangari Bandi, an aristocrat known for the mysterious circumstances of her death. His uncle was Cardinal Giovanni Carlo Bandi. His nephew was Romoaldo Braschi-Onesti, the penultimate cardinal-nephew.
Braschi was baptized in Cesena two days later on 27 December and was given the baptismal name of Angelo Onofrio Melchiorre Natale Giovanni Antonio. After completing his studies in the Jesuit college of Cesena and receiving his doctorate of both canon and civil law in 1734, Braschi continued his studies at the University of Ferrara.
Braschi became the private secretary of papal legate Cardinal Tommaso Ruffo, Bishop of Ostia and Velletri. Cardinal Ruffo took him as his conclavist at the 1740 papal conclave and when the latter became the Dean of the College of Cardinals in 1740, Braschi was appointed as his auditor, a post he held until 1753.
Braschi's skill in the conduct of a mission to the court of Naples won him the esteem of Pope Benedict XIV. In 1753, following the death of Cardinal Ruffo, Benedict appointed Braschi one of his own secretaries. In 1755, the pope appointed him as a canon of St Peter's Basilica.
In 1758, putting an end to an engagement to be married, Braschi was ordained to the priesthood. He was also appointed in 1758 Referendary of the Apostolic Signatura and held that position until the following year. He also became the auditor and secretary to Cardinal Carlo Rezzonico, the nephew of Pope Clement XIII. In 1766, Clement XIII appointed Braschi treasurer of the camera apostolica.
Braschi was a conscientious administrator, which was not good news for some. The latter managed to convince Pope Clement XIV to curb his zeal by promoting him to the cardinalate and accordingly on 26 April 1773 he was made Cardinal-Priest of Sant'Onofrio. For a brief period of time this rendered him innocuous to the less scrupulous. Left without any specific task, Braschi retired to the Abbey of Saint Scholastica, Subiaco, of which he was commendatory abbot.
Pope Clement XIV died in 1774 and in the ensuing conclave to choose a successor, Spain, France and Portugal dropped all objections to the election of Braschi, who was one of the more moderate opponents of the anti-Jesuit stance of the late pope.
Braschi received support from those who disliked the Jesuits and believed he would continue the policy of Clement XIV and maintain the provisions of Clement's brief Dominus ac Redemptor (1773) which had dissolved the order. On the other hand, the pro-Jesuit Zelanti faction believed him to be secretly sympathetic towards the order and expected him to remedy the wrongs the Jesuits suffered in the previous pontificate. These various expectations would face Braschi after his election with the virtual impossibility of satisfying either side.
Cardinal Braschi was elected pope on 15 February 1775 and took the name "Pius VI". He was consecrated bishop on 22 February 1775 by Cardinal Gian Francesco Albani and was crowned that same day by the Cardinal Protodeacon Alessandro Albani.
Pius VI first opened a jubilee his predecessor had already convoked, the 1775 Jubilee Year.
The early acts of Pius VI gave fair promise of reformist rule and tackled the problem of corruption in the Papal States. He reprimanded Prince Potenziani, the governor of Rome, for failing to adequately deal with corruption in the city, appointed a council of cardinals to remedy the state of the finances and relieve the pressure of imposts, called to account Nicolò Bischi for the spending of funds intended for the purchase of grain, reduced the annual disbursements by denying pensions to many prominent people, and adopted a reward system to encourage agriculture.
Upon his election, Pius VI ordered the release of Lorenzo Ricci, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, who was held prisoner in the Castel Sant'Angelo, but Ricci died before the decree of liberation arrived. It is perhaps due to Pius VI that the Jesuits managed to escape dissolution in White Ruthenia and Silesia. In 1792, the pope considered the universal re-establishment of the Society of Jesus as a bulwark against the ideas of the French Revolution, but did not carry this through.
Gallican and Febronian protests
Besides facing dissatisfaction with this temporising policy, Pius VI also faced elements of Enlightenment thinking which sought to limit papal authority. Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim, since 1749 bishop of Myriophiri in partibus and auxiliary bishop and vicar-general to the archbishop-elector of Mainz, wrote under the pseudonym of "Febronius", expounding Gallican ideas of national Catholic Churches. Although Hontheim was himself induced (not without public controversy) publicly to retract his positions, they were nevertheless adopted in Austria. There the social and ecclesiastical reforms which had been undertaken by Emperor Joseph II and his minister Kaunitz, as a way of influencing appointments within the Catholic hierarchy, were seen as such a threat touched to papal authority that Pius VI adopted the exceptional course of travelling in person to Vienna.
The Pope set out from Rome on 27 February 1782 and, though magnificently received by the Emperor, his mission proved a failure. Nevertheless, not many years later he did succeed in curbing the attempts of several German archbishops at the Congress of Ems in 1786 to win greater independence.
In the Kingdom of Naples the liberal minister Bernardo Tanucci agitated for certain concessions regarding feudal homage due to the papacy and some concessions were made. More serious disagreements arose with Leopold II, later emperor, and Scipione de' Ricci, bishop of Pistoia and Prato, upon the questions of proposed liberal reforms to the Church in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The papal bull Auctorem fidei, issued on 28 August 1794, is a condemnation of the Gallican and Jansenist propositions and tendencies of the Synod of Pistoia (1786).