Decentralization, Absolutism, And The Papal States – Book Review

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By Ryan McMaken*

Historian David Kertzer made a name for himself with his 1997 book The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. The book covers the until-then-rarely-mentioned case of an Italian Jewish boy who was illicitly baptized by the housekeeper, and then kidnapped in 1858 by Papal State authorities on the grounds that Jews in the Papal States could not be permitted to raise a Christian child.

Because so few books or in-depth articles have been written on the topic in English, Kertzer now enjoys a position as perhaps the preeminent expert on the case.  This is no small thing since a number of filmmakers—including Steven Spielberg— have expressed interest in dramatizing the Mortara case on film. The film project—explicitly based on Kertzer’s book—was still moving forward as of February of this year.1

There’s an important lesson here for historians: if you can find an obscure but compelling historical episode to specialize in, it might pay off in a big way.

Since the success of Mortara book, Kertzer has not strayed far from the subject matter. He has written a number of books over the past twenty years combining the topics of Jews, popes, and the modern Italian state.

With his most recent book, 2018’s The Pope Who Would Be King, Kertzer returns to the topic of the late Papal States and of the man who ruled at the time of the Mortara kidnapping: Pope Pius IX, aka “Pio Nono.”

As with the Mortara book, Kertzer once again focuses on a topic that is rarely examined at any length in the English language. This time it is the internal politics of the Papal States, and how the Papal States’ domestic politics influenced both Pius himself, and his regime’s relations with European powers such as France and Austria.

When it comes to relating the basic facts of the events surrounding the Papal States in the mid nineteenth century, it is difficult to find much fault with Kertzer’s work. As we shall see, however, Kertzer’s interpretations of these facts ignore important context, and he falls into the trap of repeating a variety of myths about medieval government and “Enlightenment” regimes. 

The Papal States and the War against Liberal Reformers

The setting itself is exciting, and Kertzer focuses most of his narrative on the events around the year 1848, a year of revolutions, upheavals, rebellions, and regime change in Europe. France, Austria, Denmark, and the German Confederation were all caught up in it. The Papal regime most certainly did not escape from this untouched: by early 1849, the pope had fled Rome, and a new democratic and constitutionalist Roman Republic was declared in his absence.

Things hadn’t started out that way for Pio Nono. Although viewed as a pope “of the people” in the early days of his rule, Pius quickly soured on the liberal reformers once it became apparent they were going to keep demanding the same reforms enjoyed under the relatively liberal regimes elsewhere in Europe. The middle classes and working classes of the Papal States, for example, were demanding a constitution with some form of representative government, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly. Most of all, these reformers wanted reforms to the legal systems of the Papal States which had long been regarded as inefficient, and overly punitive for small crimes while failing to address serious crime.  

On these matters—in part because the legal system was heavily dominated by clergy—Pio resisted. The ruling class of the Papal States—dominated by wealthy cardinals far more conservative than Pius—dug in their heels in opposition to any reform. Pius convinced himself that while liberalism may have worked in other places like England or France, the Italians were incapable of self government. As Pius explained to a French diplomat in 1849, “the Italian peoples are not suited for representative institutions. They are not yet sufficiently educated … [but] the time will come when they will be capable of having, like others, a regime that offers freedoms.”

Many within the Papal States apparently disagreed, and the pope was stripped of his political “temporal” powers in February 1849.2  

Kertzer goes on to describe how Pio Nono subsequently set up his court in exile in the Kingdom of Naples, and how he conspired with France, Spain, and Austria to retake his throne in Rome.

It is in recounting this story, complete with colorful of descriptions of various cardinal, diplomats, and heads of state, where Kertzer shines. The storytelling is engaging, and the timelines are clear. At the center of it all, of course, is Pio Nono himself, toward whom Kertzer is not unsympathetic. Pius is portrayed in a manner similar to how others have portrayed him over the years:  a man more concerned with theological matters than matters of state, and as a figure of personal piety who led an austere lifestyle.

When it came to matters of state, however, Pius often exhibited a spirit of petulance and of one who was in over his head.

Like so many other monarchs and aristocrats of the nineteenth century who found themselves deposed or in the midst of revolution, Pius was shocked to discover that he was not universally loved by his subjects.  He viewed demands for political reforms in the Papal States as cases of personal betrayal. He complained that “[n]ever has a Pope or sovereign been more miserable than me…” but was, according to Kertzer most pained by the apparent fact that after his exile, “not a single Roman had lifted a finger in defense of his rule.”

Pio Nono thus became convinced that he would require the assistance of foreign armies to re-install him as the worldly king of central Italy. He invited the Austrian army to retake the northern portions of the Papal States, centered on Bologna, the second city of the Papal States. The French, on the other hand, were to retake Rome itself. The Austrians, of course, were happy to expand their influence in northeastern Italy. For the French, the political rationale was two-fold. The French expedition would allow conservative French politicians to pander to their Catholic voters. On the other hand, the republican French regime would demand that the pope recognize basic freedoms and allow for constitutional government.

Neither the Austrians nor the French—or, apparently, the pope—had many qualms about shedding Italian blood. The Austrians shelled and besieged Bologna. The French—reluctant to shell or set afire a city filled with many of the most ancient architectural and artistic treasures of Christendom—focused their artillery on the Roman walls. Nonetheless, many shells missed, and as many as 1,800 Romans were killed in the siege. This, of course, only served to radicalize many moderate Romans against any return of papal rule, with or without reforms.

The scheme worked. The Austrians re-established rule in the northern Papal States, and the French put Pius back on his throne.  In the end, however, it was the pope who was playing the French, and the pope refused any concessions to the liberals. The French nonetheless continued to occupy Rome—and thus keep the Pope on his throne—out of fear the Austrians would seize Rome in France’s stead.

The Papal States and Absolutism in Context

These basic facts are not much in dispute, and Kertzer skillfully compiles them.

Indeed, a review of other works on the Papal States suggests a picture that is hardly flattering for papal rule. The papal states were economically backward and industrialization was far behind other European polities. Thus, poverty was more widespread and rebellion was relatively common.3  The common people were often at the mercy of vindictive local despots. Crime was often rampant. In its final decades, the papal regime was increasingly in debt, largely as a result of an enormous and burdensome welfare state.4

Yet these facts also contradict Kertzer’s interpretation of the realities of papal rule. Kertzer attempts to portray the rule of the popes as one of unrestrained absolutism. The Papal States, we are to believe, was a unified police state which answered to a single undisputed  sovereign. This, Kertzer insists, was based on notions of “the divine right of kings” and represented a theological and ideological foundation for other European advocates of absolutism.

On this, Kertzer overstates his case. Not only did the popes never achieve absolute rule within the Papal States, but the Papal States were not the model for absolutism elsewhere in Europe. Nor was the absolutist model a legacy of the Catholic Middle Ages.

A Terrible Model for Aspiring Absolutists

As the name implies, the Papal States were never one unified polity. They were, rather, a patchwork of local “states” controlled by the nobility and other “elites” such as wealthy urban professionals and landed commoners.

On a day-to-day basis, the lack of direct papal control could be seen in the administration of the legal system.5 

As noted by historian Steven Hughes, the popes had long attempted to implement their own brand of direct justice. For many years, the popes employed a police force known as “sbirri” who would become known for their corruption and disregard for local customs and interests.6 For the local aristocrats and other wealthy elites within the Papal States, however, papal rule was an inconvenience to be flouted. Indeed, in many areas,  “the better families”  instituted their own brand of law and hired criminal gangs to protect local interests. These gangs or “biricchini” Hughes tells us, “always lived on the fringes of legality.” 7 Moreover, targets of papal justice within all classes might find refuge and immunity from papal law with local nobles who offered immunity in return for loyalty from locals. Consequently, the papal police were often regarded with contempt from both nobles and ordinary people. Thus, Hughes concludes, “the central regime could count on little support from the upper echelons of society.”8

On top of this was the fact that crime in many areas remained high, in spite of the papal regime’s pretenses toward absolute rule. Hughes concludes that opposition to papal rule was fueled at least as much of perceived abuses of “absolutist” popes as by a failure to keep law and order. In other words, the papal regime may have been viewed as abusive, but the more damning indictment was likely the fact it was regarded as being of little use in helping secure the lives and property or ordinary people. Given it’s mounting debt, the Papal States were increasingly prone to failure by the time of Pius IX. 

There is no doubt, however, that the papal regime imagined itself as an absolute monarchy and sought to implement such a  regime. “Yet the reality of the Pope’s power in no way matched the pretense.”9

Kertzer’s attempt to portray the Papal States as a model for European absolutism is shaky at best.10  Kertzer also errs in attempting to connect the relatively modern absolutist model to the Middle Ages. 

The Pope Who Would Be King: The Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Europe by David Kertzer, Random House, 2018 xxx + 474 pages

In examining Pius IX’s refusal to adopt any institutions that might weaken his attempts at centralized and absolute rule, Kertzer writes” [T]he pope’s embrace of a medieval vision of society could not have been clearer.”  Kertzer attempts to tie the success of absolutist monarchs of Europe to the success of papal rule in the papal states. For Kertzer, the alleged “divine right” of the popes to rule in the papal states formed a theological argument and foundation for the legitimacy of other monarchs.

This notion, however, is ahistorical to say the least. For one, the Papal States did not exist before the eighth century. It was clear to nearly all—except perhaps the later popes themselves—that monarchs  did not require the existence of the Papal States in order to assert a right to rule. Moreover, the medieval reality was one in which monarchs were far weaker, and states far more decentralized, than was the case under the absolute rulers of Renaissance and modern Europe. In fact, political rule in the Middle Ages was often characterized by the rise of national parliaments in Europe, all of which effectively headed off attempts at absolutism by monarchs.11 The general rise of powerful regimes unimpeded by legislatures, local nobles, or independent cities is a relatively modern development in Europe.

Nor did the Church necessarily view non-monarchical institutions with suspicion. Indeed, as Lord Acton points out in his essay “Political Thoughts on the Church,” the papacy—and countless other ecclesiastical institutions—can be found on numerous occasions supporting “the people” in various forms. This was usually done to counter reigning monarchs thought to be injurious to the Church.

In other words, the “medieval vision” Kertzer seems to think was “absolutist” was actually something else entirely.

Napoleon as Catalyst for a Modernized Papal Regime

Further illustrating this point: the papal regime was greatly augmented in its final decades not by a return to medievalism, but by Napoleon’s annexation of he Papal States in 1809. As Hughes notes, it was Napoleon’s ultra-modern and bureaucratic regime that did the most to reduce the decentralism left behind my medieval institutions. It was the French state that provided “centralization backed up by Napoleon’s bayonets,” and set the stage for “the destruction of the old patterns of privilege” and allowed the papal regime to attempt a greater consolidation of power.12

By the time of Pio Nono, however, this absolutist transformation had only been incomplete and haphazard. The general public and the aristocracy both remained highly suspicious of papal police and bureaucrats, and the popes, at least outside Rome itself, never achieved absolutist rule. 

Although Kertzer provides us with a readable and helpful case study on the nineteenth century Papal States, his larger conclusions about Catholic notions or monarchy or the historical origins of the papal regime’s instability are quite superficial.13 The ideological framework underlying The Pope Who Would Be King ought to be taken with a big grain of salt. 

  • 1.For an informative discussion on the Mortara case and its implications for modern-day policy, see Francis Beckwith’s plenary lecture from the 2021 Austrian Economics Research Conference: “Taking Rites Seriously: Neither Theocracy nor Liberal Hegemony.” 
  • 2.Virtually none of the liberal reformers sought to strip the pope of his “spiritual” powers as Bishop of Rome. Rather, the focus was on the pope’s ability to act as the sovereign of a state. 
  • 3.“An Italian of the Vatican Type”: The Roman Formation of Cardinal Paul Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin Studi irlandesi. A Journal of Irish Studies, n. 6 (2016), pp. 27-47
  • 4.“Public Debt in the Papal States, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century” by Donatella Strangioin the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xliii:4 (Spring, 2013), 511–537.
  • 5.On the contrary, the older model was one of distinct anti-absolutism. This was true even in the Papal States: “On the eve of the French invasion in 1796, the privileges of Bologna’s nobility remained essentially intact. But the larger point is that throughout the early modern period the absolutist pretensions of the central state and the formal and information authority of the local elites were in constant tension, and the naturally affected the administration of justice and the nature of policing in both the city and the province.” Steven C. Hughes, Crime, Disorder, and the Risorgimento: The Politics of Policing in Bologna. (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1994) p. 11
  • 6.Stephen Hughes, “Fear and Loathing in Bologna and Rome: The Papal Police in Perspective.” in Theories and Origins of the Modern Police, ed. Clive Emsley. (London: Routledge, 2011) p. 155
  • 7.Ibid., p. 164
  • 8.Ibid., p. 164
  • 9.Ibid. p. 163
  • 10.In fact, it was the regime’s pretenses that helped to undermine the papal regime. The Papal States had never been unified economically, politically or culturally, yet the modern papacy had attempted to force unification through a bureaucratic state. It failed, and Hughes concludes: “overly centralized power placed on an incomplete political and social substructure can lead to instability rather than control. … the papal police should serve as a warning to what can happen if the pretense of power exceeds it capabilities.” Hughes, Crime, Disorder and Risorgimento. p. 5
  • 11.Examples include the English Parliament, the French Estates General, the Spanish Cortes Generales, and—in the late Middle Ages—the Sejm in Poland. Later, post-medieval monarchs succeeded in eliminating these institutions in many cases. 
  • 12.Hughes, “Fear and Loathing,” p. 167.
  • 13.Kertzer’s text also hints at a lack of a general understanding of Catholicism. Although the two are quite separate, he appears to confuse the laws of the Papal States with “the laws of the Church.” Moreover, Kertzer employs some odd language that one would not expect to see from one familiar with Catholicism. For example, Kertzer does not capitalize “Mass”—in reference to the Catholic ritual—although both the AP and Chicago style guides, and all Catholics, capitalize the word. 

*About the author: Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power&Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado and was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Source: This article was published by the MISES Institute

MISES

The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, teaches the scholarship of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace. The liberal intellectual tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) guides us. Accordingly, the Mises Institute seeks a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order. The Mises Institute encourages critical historical research, and stands against political correctness.

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