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'Pope Leo XII' (August 22, 1760 – February 10, 1829), born 'Annibale Francesco Clemente Melchiore Girolamo Nicola della Genga', was Pope from 1823 to 1829.

Contents

Life

Private secretary to Pope Pius VI

Cardinal priest

Election as Pope

Foreign policy

Domestic policy

G. S. Godkin on Leo XII

References

Life

Della Genga was born of a noble family from La Genga (now just Genga), a small town in what is now the province of Ancona, then part of the Papal States. The place of his birth is uncertain, the usual candidates being Genga, Ancona, and Spoleto. He was educated at the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici at Rome, where he was ordained priest in 1783. In 1790 della Genga attracted favourable attention by a tactful sermon commemorative of the Emperor Joseph II (1765–90).

Private secretary to Pope Pius VI

In 1792 Pope Pius VI (1775–99) made him his private secretary; in 1793 creating him titular archbishop of Tyre and despatching him to Lucerne as nuncio. In 1794 he was transferred to the nunciature at Cologne, but owing to the war had to make his residence in Augsburg. During the dozen or more years he spent in Germany he was entrusted with several honourable and difficult missions, which brought him into contact with the courts of Dresden, Vienna, Munich and Württemberg, as well as with Napoleon I of France (1804–14, 1815). It is, however, charged at one time during this period that his finances were disordered, and his private life was not above suspicion. After the abolition of the States of the Church, he was treated by the French as a state prisoner, and lived for some years at the abbey of Monticelli, solacing himself with music and with bird-shooting, pastimes which he continued even after his election as Pope.

Cardinal priest

In 1814 della Genga was chosen to carry the Pope's congratulations to Louis XVIII of France (1814, 1815–24); in 1816 he was created cardinal priest, presiding over the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, and appointed to the episcopal see of Sinigaglia, which he resigned in 1818.
In 1820 Pope Pius VII (1800–23) gave him the distinguished post of cardinal vicar.

Election as Pope

In the conclave of 1823, in spite of the active opposition of France, he was elected Pope by the ''zelanti'' on the 28th of September, taking the name of Leo XII. His election had been facilitated because he was thought to be at death's door; but he unexpectedly rallied.

Foreign policy

Leo XII's foreign policy, entrusted at first to Giulio Maria della Somaglia and then to the more able Tommaso Bernetti, moved in general along lines laid down by Consalvi; and he negotiated certain concordats very advantageous to the papacy. Personally most frugal, Leo XII reduced taxes, made justice less costly, and was able to find money for certain public improvements; yet he left the finances more confused than he had found them, and even the elaborate jubilee of 1825 did not really mend matters.

Domestic policy

Leo XII's domestic policy was one of extreme reaction. He condemned the Bible societies, and under Jesuit influence reorganized the educational system. Laws such as all Roman residents must listen to Catholic cathechism commentary led many of the Jews to emigrate. He hunted down the Carbonari and the Freemasons.
"Leo XII made himself intensely unpopular with his subjects by constraining them to observe endless rules and regulations concerning private as well as public matters. Not only did he prohibit vaccination, he also renewed all sorts of obsolete privileges such as that of sanctuary, and decreed that any dressmaker who sold low or transparent dresses would be ipso facto excommunicated. To ensure against any possible disregard of this spiritual chastisement, the penalties for wearing the offending garments were made tangible and immediate, so it is unlikely that the sempstresses' pious allegiance was often put to the test. But if the ladies had cause for complaint, the Jews fared even worse. The Pontiff denied them the right to possess property, allowing them only the shortest possible time in which to sell what they owned. He exhumed laws of the Middle Ages regarding their segregation and the marks of infamy they should wear on their clothing.[1]".

G. S. Godkin on Leo XII

:"He was a ferocious fanatic, whose object was to destroy all the improvements of modern times, and force society back to the government, customs, and ideas of mediaeval days. In his insensate rage against progress he stopped vaccination; consequently, small-pox devastated the Roman provinces during his reign, along with many other curses which his brutal ignorance brought upon the inhabitants of those beautiful and fertile regions. He curtailed the old privileges of the municipalities, granted new privileges to the religious communities, and enlarged the power of the clergy to the extent that bishops and cardinals had the power of life and death in their hands. He set the Inquisition to work with new vigour; and though torture had been nominally abolished in 1815, new kinds of torment were invented, quite as effectual as the cord, the thumbscrew, and the rack of old times. He renewed the persecution of the Jews; drove them back into the Ghetto from whence they had begun to emerge, rebuilt its walls, and had them locked in at night; and issued an edict ordering all Israelites to sell their goods within a given time on pain of confiscation." [G. S. Godkin, ''Life of Victor Emmanuel II,'' Macmillan, (1880), pp. xiii-xiv]

References

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