Pius VII
Pope elected at Venice in 1800. He concluded the Concordat of 1801 with Bonaparte, saw the Papal States annexed to the French Empire in 1809, and in 1814 restored the Society of Jesus.
Pius VII wrote his first encyclical from the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice on 15 May 1800, two months after his election; the cardinals had met at Venice to vote (Pius VII, Diu satis 1, 5 and closing line). The convention of 1801 with the French government was made in his name and that of the First Consul (Concordat of 1801, preamble). In it he agreed to ask the existing French bishops to resign and to give canonical institution to bishops named by the First Consul (Concordat of 1801, arts. 3–5).
On 17 May 1809 Napoleon, as emperor, decreed the Papal States united to the French Empire and Rome a free imperial city (Anderson, Constitutions and Documents of France, no. 84A, pp. 425–426). Pius had allowed the Jesuits to re-form in Russia in 1801 (Pius VII, Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum 3), and on 7 August 1814, at Rome, he restored the Society of Jesus for all countries (Pius VII, Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum 7 and closing line). See the French Revolution and the Church and the Suppression of the Jesuits.
In the timeline
- 21 July 1773, firm dateThe Suppression of the Jesuits
By the brief Dominus ac Redemptor of 21 July 1773 Pope Clement XIV abolishes the Society of Jesus, which the Catholic kings of France, Spain, Portugal and the Two Sicilies had already expelled. In 1814 Pius VII restores it in all countries.
- 1790 to 1801, firm dateThe French Revolution and the Church
The National Assembly takes the church’s lands and in 1790 remakes the French church by law, demanding an oath that Pius VI condemns. Priests who refuse it are killed in Paris in 1792 and outlawed in 1793. In 1801 Bonaparte and Pius VII restore Catholic worship by a concordat.