Key figures: Giovanni Angelo Braschi (Pope Pius VI), Pope Clement XIV (predecessor), Emperor Joseph II of Austria, King Louis XVI of France, Cardinal Bernis (France’s representative at the conclave), Napoleon Bonaparte
Summary
On February 15, 1775, Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Braschi, a 57-year-old career diplomat and papal administrator, was elected Pope after a conclave lasting 134 days — one of the longest in modern history, reflecting deep divisions among the cardinals over how the Church should navigate the Enlightenment and the aftermath of the Jesuit suppression. He assumed the regnal name Pius VI.
His election was significant to events of 1777 and the late eighteenth century because his pontificate framed the Catholic Church’s response to the era’s political upheavals. By 1777, barely two years into his papacy, Pius VI was already navigating conflicts with the Austrian Habsburgs over Josephinism (Emperor Joseph II’s drive to subordinate the Austrian Church to state control), tensions with France over Jansenism and Gallicanism, and the geopolitical consequences of a papacy diplomatically weakened by its capitulation to the Bourbon monarchs over the Jesuits.
Background: The Suppression of the Jesuits and the Crisis of the Papacy
The 1775 conclave occurred against the backdrop of the most severe institutional crisis the papacy had faced in decades: the suppression of the Society of Jesus.
The Jesuits — founded in 1540 and closely tied to papal authority — were the Church’s most effective educators, missionaries, and defenders of doctrinal orthodoxy. By the 1750s, however, they had accumulated enemies among both Enlightenment rationalists (who saw them as obscurantist opponents of free inquiry) and Catholic monarchies (who resented Jesuit autonomy, their loyalty to Rome over national churches, and their role in colonial economic networks).
The suppressions proceeded step by step:
- 1759: King Joseph I of Portugal, under Prime Minister Marquês de Pombal, expelled the Jesuits and confiscated their property — including vast colonial landholdings in Brazil and elsewhere.
- 1764: The Parlement de Paris (a judicial body) dissolved the French Jesuit order; King Louis XV signed the order’s dissolution in France, closing 88 Jesuit colleges.
- 1767: King Charles III of Spain expelled approximately 2,200 Spanish Jesuits, along with their colleagues in Spanish colonial territories, in a single night’s coordinated operation (April 2–3, 1767). An estimated 23,000 Jesuits worldwide were disrupted by the Bourbon suppressions.
- 1773: Pope Clement XIV, under sustained Bourbon pressure, issued the brief Dominus ac Redemptor (July 21, 1773), formally suppressing the Society of Jesus globally — a capitulation that shocked Catholic Europe and demonstrated how far Bourbon power had overridden papal independence.
Clement XIV himself died on September 22, 1774 — some contemporaries whispered of poisoning, though the actual cause was likely a combination of stress, ill health, and the psychological toll of the suppression. The conclave to choose his successor, which began October 5, 1774, faced the immediate question of what kind of pope could repair the damage to papal authority.
The Conclave of 1774–1775: 134 Days of Division
The conclave that elected Pius VI met in the Sistine Chapel from October 5, 1774, and lasted until February 15, 1775 — 134 days, during which 44 of the original 46 cardinal electors were present. (Two died during the proceedings.) Its length reflected genuine division between two factions:
The Zelanti (“zealous ones”) favored a theologically assertive pope who would reassert Jesuit privileges (or at least resist the Bourbon monarchies), reclaim papal authority over national churches, and refuse further compromise with Enlightenment rationalism.
The Crown Cardinals — representatives of the Bourbon monarchies (France, Spain, and the Two Sicilies) — favored a pope who would accommodate national-church autonomy, accept the Jesuit suppression as permanent, and work cooperatively with enlightened Catholic monarchies rather than confronting them.
Cardinal Braschi was a compromise. He was not a Zelanti ideologue (he had served the Bourbon-aligned Clement XIV), but he was not a Bourbon client either. His reputation was for administrative skill, financial acumen, and diplomatic flexibility — precisely what the divided Church seemed to need. The Crown Cardinals calculated that a practical administrator would be more accommodating than a fiery defender of papal prerogatives; the Zelanti calculated that Braschi’s administrative competence would rebuild institutional Church power. Both were partly right.
Braschi’s Character and Background
Giovanni Angelo Braschi was born December 25, 1717, in Cesena, in the Romagna (then part of the Papal States). He came from a minor noble family with longstanding ties to the papal administration. Educated by the Jesuits at Cesena, he earned a doctorate in civil and canon law in 1735 and excelled in administrative and legal subjects rather than in speculative theology.
He rose through the papal bureaucracy in the 1740s and 1750s, serving as auditor to Cardinal Ruffo and later as treasurer-general of the Apostolic Chamber — effectively the papacy’s chief financial officer. His competence in managing papal revenues and properties during a period of constant pressure from Italian states established his reputation. Clement XIV appointed him as Cardinal Deacon (with the title of Sant’Onofrio) in April 1773, elevating him to the College of Cardinals just before the Jesuit suppression — a timing that associated him with the institutional transition without directly implicating him in its controversies.
Early Pontificate: Reform and Modernization (1775–1782)
Pius VI’s early pontificate demonstrated an unusual combination of traditional assertion and pragmatic accommodation:
Financial and Administrative Reforms: Pius VI undertook ambitious reform of the Papal States’ finances. He drained the Pontine Marshes south of Rome — a massive public works project employing thousands and converting thousands of acres of malaria-ridden swampland into farmland — at personal expense and enormous organizational effort. He expanded and improved Rome’s infrastructure, including the famous renovation of the Sacristy of St. Peter’s Basilica and the Pio-Clementino Museum (opening in 1784), which housed antiquities.
Intellectual and Cultural Patronage: Pius VI was a genuine patron of the arts and learning, consistent with Enlightenment models of papal patronage. He supported the Vatican’s collections, commissioned scholarly publications on Church history and patristics, and welcomed Italian Enlightenment scholars to Rome — including Giambattista Vico’s followers and the historians of the Roman Academy. This selective embrace of “Catholic Enlightenment” — accepting rationalist methodology in scholarship while rejecting its anti-clerical conclusions — was characteristic of his adaptive approach.
The Jesuits in Suspension: Pius VI declined to restore the Jesuits (as the Zelanti had hoped), maintaining the suppression that had been dictated by Bourbon pressure. However, he tacitly allowed the Jesuit order to survive in Prussia (under Frederick the Great, who refused to publish Dominus ac Redemptor because he valued the Jesuits as educators) and in Russia (under Catherine the Great, who similarly ignored the suppression decree). The survival of a Jesuit community in these Protestant and Orthodox kingdoms, protected by rulers who had no interest in Bourbon dynastic politics, preserved the order until its restoration in 1814.
The Austrian Crisis: Josephinism (1780–1790)
The greatest institutional challenge of Pius VI’s early pontificate was Josephinism — Emperor Joseph II of Austria’s systematic subordination of the Austrian Catholic Church to state control. Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor from 1780 (when his mother, Empress Maria Theresa, died), was a committed Enlightenment monarch who believed that religion should serve social utility: educating subjects, providing charitable services, and supporting rational civic order.
Between 1781 and 1789, Joseph issued a series of reforms that transformed Austrian Catholicism:
- The Edict of Toleration (October 1781) granted limited religious freedom to Protestants and Orthodox Christians, ending the Catholic Church’s monopoly on Austrian religious life.
- He dissolved approximately 700 monasteries deemed “useless” (those devoted to contemplative life rather than active ministry), confiscating their property and redistributing revenue to charitable and educational functions. Over 36,000 monks and nuns were displaced.
- He reorganized the Austrian Church’s administrative structure, reducing the number of parishes, standardizing liturgical practices, and establishing state-controlled seminaries (Generalseminare) to train priests according to Enlightenment rationalist principles.
- He asserted state control over the publication of papal documents in Austria — meaning a papal bull could not take effect in Austrian territories without imperial approval (placitum).
Pius VI’s response was unprecedented: in March 1782, he traveled personally to Vienna — the first papal visit to Austria since the Middle Ages — to negotiate directly with Joseph II. The visit was diplomatically humiliating: Joseph received him politely but made no concessions, and contemporary observers widely perceived the papal journey as an act of supplication rather than authority. The 64-year-old pope’s willingness to undertake the difficult journey across the Alps nonetheless demonstrated both his determination and his pragmatic willingness to negotiate — negotiation being the only tool available given the papacy’s inability to enforce its positions by force.
Significance in the 1777 Context
By 1777 — two years into Pius VI’s pontificate — the patterns that would define his reign were already clear: an activist reformer managing an institution whose temporal power was declining, whose spiritual authority was contested by national churches, and whose principal diplomatic leverage came from prestige rather than power. The 1777 period saw Pius navigating:
- Rising pressure from the Habsburgs over church-state boundaries in Austria (a preview of the Josephinist crisis that would erupt after Joseph II’s accession in 1780)
- Ongoing Jansenist controversies in France and the Low Countries
- The geopolitical upheaval of the American Revolution (whose religious dimension — whether American religious diversity could coexist with Catholicism’s traditional relationship with monarchy — the papacy was watching carefully)
- Internal debates about whether the suppression of the Jesuits should be revisited
In this context, Pius VI in 1777 represents the Catholic Church at an institutional inflection point: a body of continental significance, managing decline through adaptation, led by an administrator rather than a visionary.
The French Revolutionary Crisis and Final Tragedy
The late years of Pius VI’s pontificate were catastrophic. The French Revolution dismantled the Gallican Church, confiscated Church property in France (November 1789), dissolved religious orders, required clergy to swear loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July 1790), and eventually executed hundreds of priests and bishops.
When French armies invaded northern Italy in 1796–1797, they occupied most of the Papal States. The Treaty of Tolentino (February 19, 1797) forced Pius VI to cede Avignon, the Romagna, and significant territorial possessions, and to pay 30 million francs in reparations. Rome itself was occupied by French forces in February 1798; Pius VI was arrested, declared no longer head of state, and deported — first to Siena, then to Florence, then across the Alps to Valence, France, where he died on August 29, 1799, a prisoner of the French Republic.
His death in French custody was widely read as the end of the temporal papacy. Napoleon later remarked that the papacy would collapse of its own weight — a prediction that proved spectacularly wrong when Pius VII successfully negotiated the Concordat of 1801 and participated in Napoleon’s coronation. But the near-fulfillment of this prediction during Pius VI’s imprisonment left a mark on Catholic institutional memory.
The election of a successor — Pius VII, elected in Venice in 1800 under Austrian protection — demonstrated that the institution survived its most acute crisis since the Reformation.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Pope Pius VI
- Britannica: Pius VI
- Oxford Bibliography: Church History in the Enlightenment
- Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent): Pope Pius VI and the French Revolution
- Encyclopédie Larousse: Pie VI
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