ACDF, DV

Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, Dispensationes Variae, 1828–30

ASV, SS, EM, Est.

Archivio Segreto Vatican, Secretario di Stato, Epoca Moderna, Esterni

AVPRI

Archiv Vnešnej Politiki Rossijskoj Imperii

BNR

Biblioteca nazionale, Rome

In 1810, at the age of thirty-one, Calogerá Biondi abandoned his position as priest in the diocese of Girgenti, Sicily, in search of new adventures. He spent the next few years travelling extensively before finally settling in Constantinople, where he began work with a merchant of the city. Before long a local lady had attracted his attention. The relationship that ensued destroyed any residual loyalty to his vows; it resulted in conversion to Islam, marriage and at least four offspring.

Eleven years into his second life, Biondi was suddenly overwhelmed with deep regret. In a letter dated 10 October 1828 he addressed Pope Leo xii directly, asking for forgiveness and desiring to return to the fold.Footnote ¹ He wrote of the guilt that weighed heavily on his conscience (‘massima inquietudine’) and the great remorse (‘rimorsi di coscienza’) that he had felt during most of these wayward years. He was determined to leave Constantinople and return home, and begin anew his former life. But he first needed forgiveness, in the form of a papal absolution. In words reminiscent of Augustine of Hippo, he declared his intention to leave his wife and children and live out his remaining days in a (Capuchin) monastery, ‘weeping for his sins’, so that the final resting place of his soul would be secure. He would entrust the care of these five souls to ‘the hands of the Holy Pontiff’. Leo forwarded the matter to one of his most trusted aides, Cardinal Mauro Cappellari, a Camaldolese monk and the future Gregory xvi (1831–46): ‘The Holiness of our Lord commands me to send without delay to the hand of Your Eminence the attached letter which arrived today in the mail from Constantinople. The Holy Father wishes your most Reverend Excellency to examine the contents in order to have your opinion.’Footnote ²

Known for his theological sure-footedness and methodological approach to delicate matters, Cappellari proceeded with due diligence, investigating the veracity of Biondi's story. He wrote to the bishop of Girgenti, where Biondi had previously served, requesting information on him. However, given the sensitivity of the matter, Cappellari did not reveal the real reason for the inquiry: ‘I wrote, therefore, to the bishop of Girgenti asking him in general terms to provide me with as much information as he had or could get hold of [about Biondi], but without indicating the motive for my inquiry.’Footnote ³ The bishop independently verified the facts in the case through Biondi's nephew, with whom the former priest was still in contact. The only fact that Biondi had not disclosed to his relative was his conversion to Islam.

Cappellari was touched by what he considered to be Biondi's sincere, heartfelt confession to the pontiff, and likened him to the prodigal son, who, after a period, had come to understand his errant ways, ‘groaning under the weight of the diabolical chains’ which had ensnared his soul. The Church, Cappellari believed, should open its arms to him and facilitate his return to Rome. Thus he affirmed the validity of Biondi's vows to the Church, judging his marriage illegitimate.Footnote ⁴

Why then did Cappellari depart from this principled position eighteen months later and push for a matrimonial dispensation after he had initially considered the marriage illicit? He would stand alone in adopting this most pragmatic position among the five cardinal members of the ad hoc committee assembled by Pope Leo to adjudicate on the matter. And herein lies the rub. To the extent that Pope Gregory xvi is known at all now, it is as an arch-conservative, doctrinally-rigid pope.Footnote ⁵ It was he who penned Il trionfo della Santa Sede (The triumph of the Holy See) (1799), championing the divinely-inspired, immutable nature of papal government. Thirty years later he held firm to the notion that clerics were destined by their creator to run all major aspects of papal government. In the face of European demands for rational moderate reform, he remained unmoved. Austria even dispatched a special envoy to try to ease the process of change.Footnote ⁶ In the end only the most sterile ‘reforms’ were permitted. This attitude has, for many, defined Gregory's whole pontificate. Often cited is the Lamennais affair in which he decried basic freedoms of speech and the press (Mirari Vos, 1832), in an attempt to staunch the flow of liberal ideas seeping in from northern Europe.

The story that follows therefore questions an overly simple interpretation of Gregory, and forces us to adopt a more nuanced assessment of his person and his policy. The stern judgements that are so prevalent in the historiography should not be discounted, but rather interpreted in a slightly different way. Papers on the Biondi affair discovered in the archives of the Holy Office – and hitherto untold – complicate the picture of Gregory and reveal him not as the unbending doctrinaire figure of Il trionfo, but as one who calculated the political fall-out in determining his curial opinion. In this instance political considerations concerning the Ottoman Empire trumped the integrity of a clerical vow to the Church.

After it had been determined that the family should leave Constantinople, the greatest immediate concern for Cappellari and the other cardinals was how the couple and their children would make their way to Rome. Should Biondi travel together with his ‘false wife’ and children, the couple hence being exposed to sexual temptation, or should they travel separately and risk personal harm or possible exposure?Footnote ⁷ After all, a Muslim woman was forbidden to travel without the company of a close male relative, to say nothing of travelling alone, especially over such a long distance. Her very life was in danger. And should she be apprehended, what would happen to the children? Therefore, Cappellari initially advised Biondi to use his own judgement as to how they were to travel: if the risks of travelling separately were too great, then they were to travel together, but as ‘brother and sister’, exercising all necessary caution to adhere to this arrangement.

In the end, a chaperone for the woman and children was arranged by the Sardinian foreign minister, the marquis di Gropallo, who was on assignment in the Ottoman capital. He acted as papal advisor in this matter, and organised the financial aspects of the trip.Footnote ⁸ The family would receive further assistance once they arrived in Livorno. Repayments would then be made to the Sardinian representative to the Holy See, the marquis di Crosa. Gropallo had evidently met the woman, and hinted at trouble ahead when he suggested treating her with ‘all possible sweetness in order to reassure her of your good intentions … This will merit you many advantages.’Footnote ⁹

Why was this seemingly isolated affair so important to the Curia? It was because of the precarious position in which the Catholic Church found itself in the late 1820s within the Ottoman Empire. The onset of the Greek Revolution in 1821 meant that Armenian Catholics loyal to Rome were in danger, as they were thought to be collaborating with the Greeks in some sort of pan-Christian alliance. Following the battle of Navarino in October 1827, in which ships of the alliance of Russia, France and England obliterated the combined Ottoman-Egyptian fleet, all Roman Catholics were deemed enemies of the Ottoman state and attempts were made to rid the country of them. Clerics, particularly in Constantinople and Ankara, were exiled; Armenian Catholics were pressed to convert to the Gregorian Church (‘Catholicos’), and some church properties were either confiscated and converted during the war, or plundered.Footnote ¹⁰

Cappellari, in his position as prefect of Propaganda, was spearheading efforts to bring aid to the Church. He organised the safe transport of the exiled clerics to Italy, made the necessary financial arrangementsFootnote ¹¹ and appealed to dioceses and European representatives in Rome for assistance of all types, especially financial.Footnote ¹² He was kept abreast of problems in the area by reports coming out of the Ottoman Empire via diplomats and missionary clerics, such as the Lazarites in Constantinople.Footnote ¹³ He also received reports from the nuncios in Paris and Vienna directly and indirectly via the secretary of state's office.Footnote ¹⁴ Given Cappellari's knowledge of the situation, both Leo xii and Pius viii (and their secretaries of state) sought his advice on how to aid the Armenians.Footnote ¹⁵

Cappellari's concerns were three-fold: first, the well-being of Catholics living under the sultan's rule, including enabling clerics to return home; the reacquisition of Church property; and the appointment of a spiritual leader in order to bring stability to a weakened and declining Church debilitated by the effects of revolution and the subsequent reprisals. Later he would urge a fourth objective, the establishment of official (and thus protected) status within the empire in the form of a millet. With such delicate proceedings underway, Cappellari feared that, should the Biondi affair come to light, the results could be disastrous for his mission and would scupper all his efforts up to that point. Such was the gravity of the affair that Cappellari believed it prudent to expunge Pope Leo's name from all correspondence on the Biondi matter; thus not only would the pontiff be shielded from undesirable criticism, but the Church itself would be protected should the proceedings become public. Instead, Cappellari suggested using his own name, which, while known to a certain extent, would not be as damaging to the Church in the region.

What is more, Cappellari felt duty-bound to assist the beleaguered Armenian Church beyond the obligations of his curial office. He had personal and spiritual connections with them which strengthened his resolve to help. Armenians traditionally had strong ties to Venice, Cappellari's spiritual home, where he had received his seminary education. The Mechitarists, an Armenian religious order, and the Camaldolese, Cappellari's own order, were both part of the Benedictine family, and thus shared the same spiritual heritage. In the fifteenth century an Armenian community had begun meeting in Venice in the church of Santa Croce degli Armeni.Footnote ¹⁶ In 1715, following a period of persecution in the Ottoman Empire, some Armenian Catholics, including Mechitar, were exiled to Venice. An eponymous movement sprang from this charismatic leader. Such was the activity among the order that a distinctive Armenian element could be identified in mainstream Venetian culture, in monastic, economic and literary terms.Footnote ¹⁷ What is more, the Mechitarists settled on the island of San Lazzaro, just four kilometres or so by boat from Murano, where Cappellari had initially studied and taught at San Michele (1786–95).

Cappellari's lifelong fascination with exotic languages naturally attracted him to this group from the East, who made their name with the publication of early Armenian texts. By 1789 they had already published 250 works in Armenian.Footnote ¹⁸ Later he would take a keen interest ‘in the progress of Armenian literature’.Footnote ¹⁹ In fact both he and Leo xii were seen as champions of such literary scholarship. It seems that the favoured status of the Armenians began even earlier, under Pius vii; the Irishman Richard Hayes remarked rather critically of the ‘entrenched’ position of these Armenian ‘schismatics’ within the Curia.Footnote ²⁰ Cappellari kept close company with those who wrote on Armenian topics. He was ‘an intimate friend’ of Father John Aucher while in Venice.Footnote ²¹ In 1827 Aucher translated from Armenian the works of Severian of Gabala and dedicated his project to Cardinal Cappellari.Footnote ²² Cappellari was also on first-name terms with Aristakes Azarian, the prior-general of the Mechitarists in Vienna, who ‘esteemed’ the future pope.Footnote ²³ While in Rome, many of his Armenian contacts were made at the Urban College run by Propaganda Fide. Cappellari was associated with the congregation from 1820 as consultant and from 1826 as its prefect. He knew personally many of those appointed to leadership positions in the Levant in the 1830s, including Patriarch Anthony Nourijan, as they had been pupils at the college.

Nor was this the first time that Cappellari had taken up an Armenian cause in the Curia. A letter of 1815 from a member of Cappellari's order, discussing an unspecified matter, revealed his deep interest in Armenian affairs: ‘Concerning the affair of the Armenians of St Lazzaro, we have humbly taken it to Father Abbot Capellari [sic] with maximum urgency, who took up the matter with Cardinal [Lorenzo] Litta.’Footnote ²⁴ Goodwill, it would seem, went both ways. The author of that letter mentioned a request for the Armenian monk travelling to Venice to stop off in Belluno, Cappellari's home town, in order to deliver a package of relics.Footnote ²⁵ With so many overlapping ties to the Armenian community, it was understandable that its welfare was of the utmost importance to Cappellari.

Once Biondi and his putative wife arrived in Rome, the matter was taken up by the Congregation of the Holy Office in summer 1830. The affair was shrouded in secrecy and Cappellari desired that it remain that way: ‘The case is still a secret here in relation to the condition and personal circumstances of the state of both; and it would be desirable that one not publicise it; it is … very delicate … and most urgent.’Footnote ²⁶ On 12 August cardinal members of the Holy Office met to discuss how to proceed. Three different solutions were suggested. A trio of cardinals adopted a more principled line, adhering strictly to canon law. They believed that Biondi should be separated from the rest of the family, acknowledging his earlier vows to the Church. A middle position, and surely the most impractical, was adopted by consultants at the Holy Office and supported by its Cardinal Prefect Pierfrancesco Galeffi. Here too the intention was to follow canon law but in a most unnatural manner: the couple could live together but as brother and sister.Footnote ²⁷ Cappellari alone diverged from canonical precepts, advocating a third and most politically expedient solution.Footnote ²⁸ He suggested that a papal pardon sanctioning the marriage might be warranted in this ‘touching and extraordinary case’ and that, under a new identity, Biondi and his family could establish themselves somewhere outside the Papal States where they were not known and begin a new life. This, he felt, was the best way to proceed for the good of these six souls as well as for religion.Footnote ²⁹ In any event, the cardinals were in agreement that ‘all support and assistance and help both spiritually and temporally’ would be given to them, as an act of kindness and mercy. They were receiving ‘not a small sum’ of forty-two lire from Propaganda every twenty-four days for rent and living expenses.Footnote ³⁰ With this financial aid came the expectation that the whole family would convert to Christianity.Footnote ³¹

The committee also agreed that, whichever the solution, the family should not live in Rome; rather somewhere where they were not known. Cappellari suggested that they move to Marseille. The premise for this location is unknown, other than that it was sufficiently far from Rome. In the end northern Italy was the choice. Biondi was also to be furnished with a new identity; instead of Calogerá Biondi, he was now Antonio Blondini, a merchant from Turin.Footnote ³²

Cappellari's greatest fear was the danger to the Armenian Church, should the woman (whose name is never revealed) return home discontented and Ottoman officials somehow catch wind of the story. Unfortunately for Cappellari, the current pope (by this time Pius viii) had a different agenda. He was more concerned about the precedent that this case would set for clerics within the Church than with any repercussions from the Ottoman authorities. To that extent, he seemed willing to accommodate the woman should she desire to leave and take up her Islamic faith again. For Cappellari, this represented a potentially huge danger for the Armenian Church:

He continued to push for a dispensation, worried about the impracticality of the two other solutions, that of living separately or as siblings, and the possibility of rash behaviour on the part of the couple:

Cappellari's fears were reinforced in a letter of December 1830. Biondi's ‘wife’ was threatening to end her life or to flee to Constantinople should she be denied the right to live with her husband.Footnote ³⁵ The dishonour and stigma of being labelled ‘a prostitute’ and being an outcast from Islamic society for the rest of her life compelled her to consider such extreme actions. Apostates from Islam after all lived under the lingering fear of possible execution should they be discovered.

Cappellari urged Pius viii to permit the marriage after the woman's baptism, to ensure that the children remained Catholic and to avoid harm to the Armenian community: ‘Inspired by compassion over the loss of six souls, especially the innocent children, and considering that the return to their country … might excite a new fury against Catholicism by the always brutal government.’Footnote ³⁶ He admitted his unease: ‘I find myself in extreme embarrassment … in this affair.’Footnote ³⁷

Despite his fears about what would happen if the woman were allowed to go home, Cappellari affirmed his complete submission to the pope and full adherence to any final decision.Footnote ³⁸ And indeed he would be called to submit to a decision that he opposed. Pius concluded that the greatest concern for the Church was not possible repercussions for the Armenian Church, but the example that this case would set for celibate priests: ‘the most severe problems [guai] especially in these times, if one agrees to such an arrangement, in Italy, would arise from a priest taking a wife; it would be a most fatal example of which the enemies of clerical celibacy would take advantage’.Footnote ³⁹ Pius had good reason for concern. This issue of clerical marriage had resurfaced in Germany in the late 1820s, and the practice had spread quickly. Clerics in Baden and Freiburg initiated movements promoting clerical marriage, decrying the Church's insistence on celibacy. Known collectively as Febronianists, these (mainly) young clerics sought support from political authorities in order to enact change independently of Rome.Footnote ⁴⁰ Drawing on the ideas of the movement's late eighteenth-century founder, they claimed that celibacy was merely a discipline of the Church and not an immutable doctrine and therefore should not be enforced on all clerics. In practice, such relaxed conditions were already becoming commonplace in the eighteenth century in certain German lands.Footnote ⁴¹ More than 80 per cent of seminarians in Baden had partners.Footnote ⁴² What is more, the movement in Baden had radicalised other areas of central and lower Germany, and Prussia too pushed for reform.Footnote ⁴³ Pressure continued unabated in the 1830s. The level of concern was high enough to compel Pope Gregory himself to address the issue in the eleventh paragraph of Mirari Vos (1832):

Despite having strong reasons for his decision, Pius offered a contorted solution to the Blondini case, which aimed to appease all sides but in the end satisfied virtually no one: Blondini and the woman were allowed to live together ‘as brother and sister’.Footnote ⁴⁴

From the Curia's perspective, the affair was concluded. The family at the centre of it all, however, was of a different mind. Biondi arrived to Rome with his wife and children in tow in early summer 1830.Footnote ⁴⁵ They were provided with free transport and lodging while they adjusted to their new life and went through the catechism.Footnote ⁴⁶ Early on in their stay, however, the behaviour of the newly-named Blondini and his family was described as ‘irregular’.Footnote ⁴⁷ As Cardinal De Gregorio was negotiating a time and place for their baptism that autumn, the whole family suddenly left Rome for Naples. Blondini's request for a holiday in Naples, ostensibly to escape the heat, was interpreted in Rome as another lapse in faith; that in fact the real reason for the family's departure was to live a secular life.

Castruccio Castracane, secretary of Propaganda of the Faith, who was monitoring the situation, offered more detail:

Their stay in Naples, however, was cut short when they were found to have inadequate documents;Footnote ⁴⁹ they were forced to return to Rome.

The monsignor assigned to give religious instruction to the family told Castracane that he believed that the woman wanted to return to Constantinople with her children and that Blondini would accompany her part of the way before separating.Footnote ⁵⁰ This is just the scenario that Cappellari had feared. She had recently made two requests for ‘largesse’, which was in each case delivered ‘promptly’.

Moreover, upon their return to Rome, Blondini was even more uncooperative, according to reports.Footnote ⁵¹ He treated Roman officials with ‘disgust’ and his wife's coldness towards Christianity revealed to church officials their true intent. They wished to escape Rome and remove themselves from the conditions imposed upon them. Blondini had abjured Islam back in the middle of August 1830, with Cappellari as witness, but he had since shown only slight interest in the Christian faith.Footnote ⁵² Since their return from Naples his wife had not received any religious instruction.Footnote ⁵³ Castracane could not understand why, if their intentions were sincere, Blondini had not apprised Monsignor Tomaggiani of his return to Rome in order to resume their ‘[Christian] education’: ‘I warned Sr Blondini … of the enormity of his failings, and not only did he receive my warnings with indignation, but what is more he complained that there had not been enough regard for the work that he had done in leading the woman and the children to the faith.’Footnote ⁵⁴ Castracane concluded very gloomily that he feared that Propaganda was financing ‘a concubine’ for Blondini.

The case took yet another unexpected turn when Cappellari was elected pope, as Gregory xvi, following eight weeks of deliberation, on 2 February 1831. He moved forthwith to reverse Pius viii's decision and granted absolution, allowing the couple to live as husband and wife.Footnote ⁵⁵ Gregory had good reasons for moving as quickly as he did. First, with so much progress made on behalf of Armenian Catholics, he wanted to leave nothing to chance. In 1830 a Latin patriarch, Anthony Nourijan, had been named to Constantinople, providing more structure and legitimacy to the Armenian Catholic community.Footnote ⁵⁶ Pius viii had called on Cappellari to assist the secretary of state with Nourijan's transition, since as prefect of Propaganda Cappellari possessed the necessary political and ecclesiastical expertise to deal with the particularities of this job, including Nourijan's Austrian citizenship (Cappellari, who came from Belluno, also held Austrian citizenship). Cappellari approved the negotiation and later drafted the letter sent to the Armenians telling of the news.Footnote ⁵⁷ Cardinal Placido Zurla, Cappellari's closest friend and fellow Camaldolese monk, presided over the installation ceremony.Footnote ⁵⁸ And at the beginning of 1831 the sultan finally granted a millet to the Catholic Armenians, providing them with long-desired political legitimacy.

Secondly, securing an immediate end to this lengthy issue was prudent, given the impending crisis in the Papal States on the heels of Gregory's election; significant unrest was being reported in areas to the north of Rome, precipitated by the rumoured plans throughout the lengthy conclave for revolt within the capital city itself.Footnote ⁵⁹ Louis Napoleon (nephew of Napoleon i) and scores of Italians were implicated and forced to leave Rome, only then to regroup around the revolutionary Ciro Menotti in Modena.Footnote ⁶⁰ Such was the crisis that Pope Gregory was forced to name an interim secretary of state earlier than planned in order to deal with the sheer volume of issues that required attention. The Russian envoy Prince Grigory Gagarin noted that ‘Since his election, Gregory xvi has not wanted to hurry to name a definite minister preferring … first to orient himself [with the important political matters], but the rapid pace of events has obliged him to decide to name the pro-Secretary of State, Tomasso Bernetti.’Footnote ⁶¹ Revolts were reported in four of the five regions of the Papal States and local government was being toppled, causing the papal government ‘consternation’.Footnote ⁶² To compound his worries, Gregory also had to address external problems. Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland induced Gagarin to request early action from Gregory in the form of an official rebuke to those Polish clergy who had taken part.Footnote ⁶³

There is much to be gleaned from the Biondi case in understanding both the policies and person of Gregory xvi. His initial principled stance in the affair was replaced by a more practical solution as the circumstances, including the unpredictability of Biondi's wife, threatened to complicate matters for the Armenian Catholic Church. Once Cappellari became pope he overturned his predecessor's decision and permitted the couple to live in a lawful marriage. Church unity was paramount for Cappellari, and this meant, above all, preserving the Armenian Catholics from destruction. Keeping the Biondi family together greatly reduced the risk for his Church in the Levant at a most precarious moment. He also desired to retain the family of new converts within the Catholic fold, especially the children.

The affair also reveals Cappellari as a moderate within the Roman Curia, at least by the standards of the time. This was understood by his contemporaries within the diplomatic corps in Rome. The secretary of the Austrian embassy in Rome, Baron Gennotte, drew up a list of potential papabile candidates for the conclave of 1829 and placed Cappellari as a moderato, the most liberal-leaning of the three categories on his chart.Footnote ⁶⁴ Diplomats from Prussia, Austria, England and France also saw him as both politically realistic and astute, based on his approach to decisions within the Curia while cardinal (1826–31).Footnote ⁶⁵

Later Gregory was to exhibit similar flexibility in the Montel affair.Footnote ⁶⁶ Diplomatic pressure from France forced Gregory's hand in determining whether to place a newly-baptised Jewish infant in an orphanage against his parents' wishes or to relent and allow the child to be placed under the care of the French (as the family was French). Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers threatened to go public with the affair and create a public relations scandal should the pontiff adhere closely to canon law and take the child away from his parents. In a show of prudence, the conservatively-inclined pope adopted a more pragmatic approach and relented, following promises made by the prime minister to meet certain face-saving conditions outlined by the pope.

Cappellari's open-mindedness where political considerations were concerned took precedence in his position as prefect of Propaganda (1826–30). The missionary Church, which he oversaw, operated in a minority position within non-Catholic societies. Cappellari had to sensitise himself to the political conditions in various non-Catholic lands in order to assess the risk of any particular directive from his office and the potential fallout.

Contributing to the hitherto rather over-simplified interpretation of Gregory was his penchant for secrecy. He was not prone to gossip or to sharing information with those not directly involved – as laudable a personal quality as it is unfortunate for the archival historian. He avoided at all costs public scrutiny in the Montel affair, following warnings from Thiers. So too, in the Biondi affair, Cappellari revealed his strong preference for restricting the flow of information only to those who needed to know.

Ironically, Gregory was more politically calculating than his successor turned out to be, despite Pio Nono's initial reputation for liberalism. In sharp contrast to Gregory's actions over the Montel child, in the Edgardo Mortara affair, Pius stubbornly reaffirmed the Church's decision to keep the young Jewish convert in a Catholic orphanage over the vociferous objections of his parents and the international community.Footnote ⁶⁷ This action tainted his pontificate in a way that Gregory had wished to avoid. For Gregory, projecting a positive image of the Church to the rest of the world was critical if the Church were to fulfil its great commission. He was sensitive to this objective at least partly because of his time as prefect of Propaganda Fide. To achieve his aims he was even willing to compromise long-standing church practices.

In a later reference to the Biondi affair, in 1842, following an inquiry into the matter by the government of Naples, Gregory still wanted secrecy. The whole family appeared to have been baptised and to be still together. A report of the response of the secretary of state, Luigi Lambruschini, to Naples, on 22 November 1842, reads: