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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Pius VI Biography Pius VI (Giovanni Angelo Braschi). Pope 1775–99. He was born of an impoverished but noble family in 1717 and early entered the ecclesiastical service, being made Cardinal in 1773 by Clement XIV, whom he succeeded two years later. After long controversy he was obliged to compromise on questions of ecclesiastical appointments with the Emperor Joseph II and the King of Naples; but his greatest troubles came from the aggressions of the French Republic. The Pope had rejected the clerical laws of 1791 and protested against the execution of Louis XVI. In 1793 a popular tumult in Rome, which was caused by the imprudence of a French political agent named De Basseville, resulted in his death and added to the difficulties. In 1796 Bonaparte took possession of the legations and afterward of the March of Ancona, and by a threatened advance upon Rome extorted from Pius, in the Treaty of Tolentino (February, 1797), the surrender of these provinces, which were constituted part of the Cisalpine Republic. Finally the Directory ordered an advance upon Rome; Berthier entered the city Feb. 10, 1798, where the Roman Republic was proclaimed, and 10 days later the Pope, refusing to renounce his temporal sovereignty, was seized and carried off to Siena and later to the Certosa, near Florence. On the threatened advance of the Austro-Russian army in the following year, he was transferred to Grenoble, and finally to Valence on the Rhone, where, worn out by age and the rigor of confinement, he died, Aug. 29, 1799, after the longest pontificate until then recorded. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XVIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 686-687. |