Politics and Religion in Napoleonic Italy: The War Against God, 1801-1814

255 Pages·2001·0.93 MB·English

by  Michael Broers

THE POLITICS OF RELIGION
IN NAPOLEONIC ITALY
The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy explores the intense cultural
conflict created by French rule in Italy at the start of the nineteenth century.
Napoleon’s desire for cultural conformity struck at the heart of Italian reli-
gious life. Yet the reforms imposed by French rule created resentment and
resistance across Italy, finally leading to Napoleon’s famous quarrel with
Pope Pius VII.
In this fascinating study, Michael Broers traces the events leading up to
the excommunication of Napoleon and the Pope’s arrest and exile from
Rome. In particular, attention is given to the impact these reforms had on
the Italian masses and popular piety. Using previously neglected French and
Italian archival sources, The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy reveals
how the alliance between Church and people grew in the face of alien, impe-
rial rule. It exposes the vital role this union played in preventing Italy from
being totally assimilated into the French empire.
Highlighting concepts of cultural imperialism more usually associated
with the non-European world, this incisive piece of scholarship reveals much
about the prejudices driving French imperial policy. The Politics of Religion
in Napoleonic Italy will appeal to historians of modern France and Italy
alike.
Michael Broersis Reader in the Department of History at the University of
Aberdeen. He is the author of several books, including Europe Under
Napoleon, 1799–1815 (1996) and Europe After Napoleon: Revolution,
Reaction and Romanticism, 1814–1848(1996).

THE POLITICS OF
RELIGION IN
NAPOLEONIC ITALY
The war against God, 1801–1814
Michael Broers
London and New York
First published 2002
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
© 2002 Michael Broers
All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library ofCongress Cataloging in Publication Data
Broers, Michael.
The politics ofreligion in Napoleonic Italy : the war against God, 1801-1814 /
Michael Broers.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Catholic Church–Italy–History–19th century. 2. Christianity and
politics–Italy–History–19th century. 3. Christianity and politics–Catholic
Church–History–19th century. 4. Italy–Church history–19th century.
5. Italy–Politics and government–1789-1815. I. Title
BX1545 .B76 2001
322’.1’094509034–21
2001041600
ISBN 0-203-16590-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-26054-6 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–26670–X(Print Edition)
The eagle of empire cannot lie down with the lamb of God.
Nietzsche

CONTENTS
Preface: The eagle of empire and the lamb of God ix
Acknowledgements xv
1 The last barbarian invasion? 1
The motives of French rule in Italy 2
The position of the Tridentine Church 5
2 Centre and periphery: The power and limits of a concept 7
The periphery: First impressions. From ‘nuestras Indías’
to ‘a thousand Vendées’ 11
The centre: Saints or soldiers, Catholics or citizens? 19
3 The religion of the rulers 27
4 The religion of the ruled 52
Madonnas and miracles 54
The lay confraternities 66
Liturgical resistance 77
5 The Concordat and the Italian clergy 86
The episcopate 86
The parish clergy 99
The periphery 102
The centre 114
The regular clergy 125
CONTENTS
6 The Roman clergy and the crisis of the Oath 146
The Oath and the clergy of the Papal states 150
The Roman diaspora 161
The failure of the Concordat of Fontainebleau 166
The priests, the police and the people 168
7 The war against God 175
Borromeo and Bonaparte 175
Church and state in the nineteenth century 179
A theology for reaction and liberation? 185
Notes 190
Bibliography 221
Index 227
viii
PREFACE
The eagle of empire and the lamb of God
All our books are personal to us, or we could not live with them. This book
is no exception. I began thinking about it in 1983 and, whatever else I was
involved with, it always stayed very close to me. Along the way, there was
much encouragement and quite a lot of criticism, most of it constructive,
some of it shocking in its incoherent displeasure, all of it revealing. For
several very different reasons, I decided to stick to my guns and, for better
and for worse, this is the result.
First, I felt that the simple idea behind the project was sound: The
Catholic religion is a – arguably the – central cultural and social element in
Italian life, and to tangle with it would be a considerable undertaking. The
French did so, under Napoleon, introducing the wholesale changes of the
Concordats. To my knowledge, there is no study of the period that examines
this on a wide canvas or at the grassroots, so I began. It was encouraging to
do so during a period when the issue of religion was at last finding its place
in the history of the revolutionary period. The series of lectures given by
Colin Lucas at Oxford in the early 1980s awakened me to much. The work
of Donald Sutherland, Timothy Tackett, in particular and of T.C.W.
Blanning beyond France, showed me what might be possible.1 In the course
of this research, there has been a flowering of fine literature, mainly by
Anglo-Saxon scholars, on the mid-century Catholic revival, and this gave me
an exciting historical context to which I could attempt to connect my own
work on the earlier period.2 This was also the moment when Edward Said’s
formulation of cultural imperialism started to make an impact, and I could
see much in common with my own work.3There has been much hostility to
this proposition but it still seems valid, if fraught with complications. If
there could be cultural imperialism in one country, as foreshadowed in the
works of Linda Colley and much earlier – and prophetically – in those of
Eugene Weber,4then there was a fighting chance that it was also there in the
largest, most heterogeneous empire the continent of Europe had known in
modern times. I believe it was there, and that the concept is present in the
archivalsourcesavantlalettre.InthelaststagesofmyworkIwasgiventimely
encouragement that the concept has a place in the specific historiography
ix