The Pope who would be King (Oh No No!)





I've just read and enjoyed "The Pope Who Would Be King  - The exile of Pius IX and the emergence of Modern Europe"  David I. Kertzer, Random House, 2018).

Pope Pius IX (1792-1878) was the Pontiff from 1846 until his death.  For much of his papacy he was not only the head of the Roman Catholic Church, but also the Absolute Monarch of the Papal States.



Upon his election he was greeted as a political reformer and was fêtéin the streets of Rome.  For example he instituted  the beginning of representative City Government, and ordered the iron gates of the Jewish Ghetto to be torn down.

But when his civilian Prime Minister was assassinated  and the Roman Citizenry threatened his absolute and ultimately repressive political  authority he fled in exile from Rome.  

The existing powers (Spain, France, Austria) had a dog in this fight and it was through the intervention of French armed forces that Pius IX was restored to Rome and his autocratic rule. 

It was a short lived triumph.  The movement towards a united Italy (Garibaldi etc and all that) led to a united Italy and  the fall of the Papal States and  another kind of Papal exile, not to the secular palace of the Quirinal, but to the religious  enclave of the Vatican.

Pius IX was venerated by devoted Catholics as "the Prisoner of the Vatican".  Indeed no Pope ever ventured outside the Vatican  until the Concordat between Mussolini and the Papacy  which led to the establishment of the Vatican as a City State.

Pius IX became an utterly reactionary Pope. It was under his rule that the "Syllabus of Errors" was promulgated, condemning all things liberal and modern.  And it was during his Papacy that the dubious doctrine of Papal infallibility was promulgated,  at the first Vatican Council.

Thus the Roman Catholic Church turned its back on the world until the Papacy of John XXIII and the second Vatican Council.

In the Italian language Pius IX is rendered as Pio Nono  It's a clever pun  "Pio NO  NO".

I truly like,  admire and recommend  Kertzer's book.  It is not just a story about Pio Nono.  It is more than a biography of a Pope.  It is a primer on the emergence  of representative democracies in Europe. 

In our times, when western ideas of democracy are under fire, and some religious leaders would seek to impose their theological views as the law of the land,  Kertzer's book should give us pause for thought.

Thanks to National Public Radio you can read the transcript of a broadcast when David L Kertzer met Terry Gross on the radio programme "Fresh Air".

Enjoy the transcript (below), but above all read the book. My copy will go back to the Sarasota County Public Library system within a day or two.



https://www.npr.org/2018/04/24/605252936/why-pius-ix-might-be-the-most-important-pope-in-modern-church-history

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