Pope Leo XII

Pope Leo XII (22 August 1760 10 February 1829),

born Annibale Francesco Clemente Melchiore Girolamo Nicola Sermattei della Genga,[lower-alpha 1] reigned
from 28 September 1823 to his death in 1829.

nunciature at Cologne, but owing to the war had to make

his residence in Augsburg. At this time, he believed it
would be his last post and organized the construction of
tombs for his mother and for himself.

As pope, Leo XIIs reign of the Papal States was unpop- During the dozen or more years he spent in Germany he
ular among most people who would revolt in uprisings to was entrusted with several honourable and dicult missome of the policies that he implemented.
sions, which brought him into contact with the courts of
Dresden, Vienna, Munich and Wrttemberg, as well as
with Napoleon I of France. It is, however, charged at one
time
during this period that his nances were disordered,
1 Biography
and his private life was not above suspicion. For example
he was suspected of having had a liaison with the wife of
1.1 Early life
the soldier of Swiss Guard and allegedly fathered three
illegitimate children.[3]
Della Genga was born in 1760 to a noble family from
La Genga,[1] a small town in what is now the province After the Napoleonic abolition of the States of the Church
of Ancona, then part of the Papal States. He was born (1798), he lived for some years at the abbey of Monticelli,
as the sixth of ten children to Flavio della Genga and solacing himself with music and with bird-shooting, pasMaria Luisa Periberti di Fabriano. He was the brother times which he continued even after his election as Pope.
of Filippo della Genga. He was born at the Castello della
Genga in the territory of Spoleto.[2] He was educated at
1.4 Cardinal
the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici at Rome, where
he was ordained priest in 1783. In 1790 the attractive
In 1814 della Genga was chosen to carry Pope Pius
and articulate della Genga attracted favourable attention
VII's congratulations to Louis XVIII of France upon his
by a tactful oration commemorative of the late Emperor
restoration.
Joseph II.
On 8 March 1816 he was created Cardinal-Priest of Santa
He was the uncle of Gabriele della Genga Sermattei who
Maria in Trastevere and he received his red zucchetto
in the 19th century was the only nephew of a pope to be
on 11 March and his titular church on 29 April 1816.
elevated to cardinal.
Later he was appointed as the Archpriest of the Basilica
di Santa Maria Maggiore, and appointed to the episcopal
see of Sinigaglia, which he resigned in 1818 due to health
1.2 Education and ordination
reasons. He resigned without never having entered his
[2]
Della Genga studied theology at the Collegio Campana archdiocese.
in Osimo from 1773 to 1778 and later at the Collegio Pi- On 9 May 1820, Pope Pius VII gave him the distinguished
ceno in Rome until 1783 when he commenced studies at post of Vicar-General of His Holiness for the Diocese of
the Pontical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles. He later Rome.[4]
received the subdiaconate in 1782 and then the diaconate
in 1783.

2 Ponticate

Della Genga was ordained to the priesthood on 14 June

1783 and served as an ambassador to Switzerland.

2.1 Papal election

1.3

Papal nuncio and episcopate

Main article: Papal conclave, 1823

In 1794 Pope Pius VI made him a canon of Saint Peters

Basilica,[2] and in 1793 created him Titular Archbishop
of Tyre. He was consecrated in Rome in 1794 after
the appointment and was despatched to Lucerne as the
Apostolic Nuncio. In 1794 he was transferred to the

Pope Pius VII died in 1823 after yet another long pontificate that spanned over two decades. In the conclave of
1823, della Genga was the candidate of the zelanti faction and in spite of the active opposition of France, he was
1

2 PONTIFICATE

elected as the new pope by the cardinals on 28 September 2.3 Domestic policy
1823, taking the name of Leo XII.
His election had been facilitated because he was thought Leo XIIs domestic policy was one of extreme conserto be at deaths door, but he unexpectedly rallied. He vatism: He was determined to change the condition of
had even remarked about his own health to the cardinals, society, bringing it back to the utmost of his power to the
saying that they would be electing a dead man.[4] It was old usages and ordinances, which he deemed to be adand he pursued that object with never agging
said in the conclave that he lifted his robes to show the mirable;
[7]
zeal.
He
condemned the Bible societies, and under
cardinals a pair of swollen and ulcerated legs in order to
Jesuit
inuence
reorganised the educational system, placdeter them. However, this made them more eager to elect
ing
it
entirely
under
priestly control through his bull Quod
[5]
him.
divina sapientia and requiring that all secondary instrucLeo XII was 63 at the time of his election and fell victim tion be carried out in Latin, as he required of all court
to inrmities on a constant basis. He was tall and thin with proceedings, also now entirely in ecclesiastical hands. All
an ascetic look with a melancholic countenance. He fell charitable institutions in the Papal States were put under
ill after his coronation and surprised people with the en- direct supervision.
durance at which he carried his work after he recovered.
Leo XII devoted himself to his work and was simple in Laws such as that forbidding Jews to own property and
his mode of life. He had a passion for shooting birds and allowing them only the shortest possible time in which to
was rumored to have killed a peasant whom he argued sell what they owned, and that requiring all Roman residents to listen to Catholic catechism commentary, led
with about sporting rights.[5]
many of Romes Jews to emigrate, to Trieste, Lombardy
The cardinal protodeacon Fabrizio Ruo crowned him as and Tuscany.[8][9]
ponti on 5 October 1823.
The results of his method of governing his states soon
showed themselves in insurrections, conspiracies, assassinations and rebellion, especially in Umbria, the Marches
and Romagna; the violent repression of which, by a sys2.2 Foreign policy
tem of espionage, secret denunciation, and wholesale
application of the gibbet and the galleys, left behind it
Pius VIIs Secretary of State, Ercole Consalvi, who had to those who were to come afterwards a very terrible,
been Della Gengas rival in the conclave, was immediately rankling and long-enduring debt of party hatreds, of podismissed, and Pius policies rejected.[6] Leo XIIs foreign litical and social demoralisation, and worst of all
policy, entrusted at rst to the octogenarian Giulio Maria a contempt for and enmity to the law, as such.[10] In
della Somaglia and then to the more able Tommaso Ber- a regime that saw the division of the population into
netti, negotiated certain concordats very advantageous to Carbonari and Sanfedisti, he hunted down the Carbonari
the papacy. Personally most frugal, Leo XII reduced and the Freemasons with their liberal sympathisers.
taxes, made justice less costly, and was able to nd money Leo XII made himself intensely unpopular with his subfor certain public improvements, yet he left the Churchs jects by constraining them to observe endless rules and
nances more confused than he had found them, and even regulations concerning private as well as public matthe elaborate jubilee of 1825 did not really mend nancial ters. For instance, he decreed that any dressmaker
matters.
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 oending garments were made tangible and immediate, so it is unlikely that the seamstresses pious allegiance was often put to the test.

2.4 Vaccination controversy

Papal Rome in the time of Leo XII, by Silvestr Feodosievich

Shchedrin

According to some contemporary authors such as G.S

Godkin, Leo XII was also said to have prohibited
vaccination.[11] More recent scholarship has been unable
to nd any ban or any suggestion of a ban by Leo XII
and his administration. Donald J. Keefe in his paper
Tracking the footnote[12] traced a quote by Leo XII
which strongly condemned vaccination to an unveried
citation by Dr. Pierre Simon in Le Contredes Naissances. The response of the Papacy to the arrival of

3
vaccination in Italy has been documented in Pratique de
la vaccination antivariolique dans les provinces de ltat
pontical au 19me sicle, an article written by YvesMarie Berc and Jean-Claude Otteni for Revue dHistoire
Ecclsiastique.[13] According to Berc and Otteni, the biographers and contemporaries of Leo XII do not mention any interdict. The authors credit the origin of the
mythical vaccination ban of Leo XII to the personality
of Cardinal Della Genga when he became pope in 1823.
His intransigence and piety alienated liberal opinion very
quickly. His austere spirituality made him the target of
criticisms and mocking remarks. English travelers visiting the peninsula and many of the diplomats established
in Rome remarked on the severity of the ponti. The
obscurantism of the Church, the inertia of the pontical
government, the ridiculous superstitions of Italian piety,
the idleness and the dirtiness of the Southerners were
commonplaces stereotypes from the accounts of travelers to Italy.

2.5

3 Death and legacy

Activities

Leo XII beatied a number of individuals in his ponticate which totaled at 15. He beatied: Angelina di
Marsciano (8 March 1825), Hippolytus Galantini (29
June 1825), Angelus of Gualdo Tadino (3 August 1825)
and Angelus of Acri (18 December 1825). He also beatied in 1825: Bernard Scammacca, Julian of Saint Augustine [14] , Alonso Rodriguez and James Grissinger. He
beatied Imelda Lambertini (20 December 1826) and
also conrmed the cultus of Jordan of Saxony in 1826.
He also beatied Helen of Poland and Magdalen Panattieri on 26 September 1827 as well as Giovanna Soderini
(1827) and Helen Duglioli and Juana de Aza in 1828. Leo
XII also created Peter Damian a Doctor of the Church in
1828 in addition to the formal canonization he presided
over.

The monument to Leo XII.

On 5 February 1829, after a private audience with the

new Cardinal Secretary of State, Tommaso Bernetti, he
was suddenly taken ill and he seemed to know that his end
was near. On 8 February, he asked for and received the
Viaticum and was anointed. On 9 February, he lapsed
into unconsciousness and on the next morning, he died.
He collaborated with Vincent Strambi - future saint - He was buried in a monument of him in Saint Peters
who served as his advisor. When he was on the brink Basilica on 15 February 1829. His remains were transof death in 1825, Strambi oered himself to God for the ferred and buried before the altar of Pope Leo I on 5 Desurvival of the pope. The pope rallied from his ailment, cember 1830.
but Strambi died.
Leo XII was a man of noble character, a passion for orThe pope also approved the Missionary Oblates of Mary der and eciency, but he lacked insight into the tempoImmaculate on 17 February 1826 when he gave it ocial ral developments of his time. His rule was unpopular
in Rome and in the Papal States, and by various mearecognition.
sures of his reign he diminished greatly for his successors
He held 8 consistories in which he elevated 25 new cartheir chances of solving the new problems that confronted
dinals into the cardinalate.
them.[15]
Leo XII made himself unpopular with the people due to
the fact that he constrained them to endless rules that concerned private life and public aairs. He decreed that a
dressmaker who sold low or transparent dresses would in- 4 See also
cur ipso facto excommunication. The pope also denied
the Jews the right to possess material possessions and al Cardinals created by Leo XII
lowed them the shortest time to sell their belongings. He
revived the regulations of the Middle Ages in regards to
List of encyclicals of Pope Leo XII
segregation and marks for identication.[5]

Notes

[1] English: Hannibal Francis Clement Melchior Jerome

Nicholas Sermattei della Genga
[1] The town is now simply Genga.
[2] Toke, Leslie. Pope Leo XII. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company,
1910. 28 Aug. 2014
[3] Letters from Rome in: The New Monthly Magazine and
Literary Journal, Tom 11, pp. 468-471.
[4] Miranda, Salvador. Della Genga, Annibale, The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church
[5] Pope Leo XII: Proceedings of the Conclave that led to
his election.. Pickle Publishing. Retrieved 9 February
2015.
[6] Francis A. Burkle-Young, Papal Elections in the Age of
Transition, 18781922, 2000:22.
[7] Luigi Carlo Farini, Lo stato Romano, dell'anno 1815 a
1850, (Turin, 1850) vol. I, p. 17, quoted by Thomas
Adolphus Trollope, The Story of the Life of Pius the Ninth
vol. I (1877:39f)
[8] Farini, 'eo. loc.
[9] Valrie Pirie, ''The Triple Crown: An Account of the Papal Conclaves'". Pickle-publishing.com. Retrieved 201306-23.
[10] Trollope, p. 41.
[11] Godkin, G. S. (1880). Life of Victor Emmanuel II.
Macmillan
[12] Donald J. Keefe, Tracking the footnote, Fellowship
of Catholic Scholars Newsletter, Volume 9, Number 4,
September 1986 p. 6-7.
[13]
[14] Faithful and True Translation of a Brief Memoir of the
Life and Miracles of the Saintly Brother Julian of Alcala,
1610. World Digital Library.
[15] Pope Leo XII. Retrieved 24 January 2014.

References
This article incorporates text from a publication now
in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911).
Encyclopdia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge
University Press.

External links
Catholic-Hierarchy entry

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