The Pursuit of Glory by Tim Blanning

Author:Tim Blanning
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101202456
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2007-12-30T10:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Religion and Culture

7

Religion and the Churches

ROME AND THE PAPACY

Of all the innumerable ‘view paintings’ (vedute) produced during the eighteenth century as souvenirs for aristocrats making the Grand Tour to Italy, there can be few as splendid as Giovanni Paolo Pannini’s The French ambassador to the Holy See leaving St. Peter’s Square, Rome of 1757 (Plate XX). Although the notional subject is well represented by a procession of ten sumptuous carriages in the foreground, the canvas is dominated by the backdrop of St Peter’s Basilica, the largest church in Christendom. Its dome by Michelangelo, façade by Maderna and all-embracing colonnade by Bernini, combine to form an architectural affirmation of the spiritual supremacy of the Pope: Bishop of Rome, Supreme Pontiff, successor to St Peter. When the comte de Stainville (soon to be promoted as duc de Choiseul) had visited the Pope for his audience, he had alighted from his carriage at the foot of the Scala Regia, the grandest of grand staircases, created by Bernini in the 1660s. On the main landing he had encountered Bernini’s monumental equestrian statue of Constantine the Great, whose conversion to Christianity had begun the triumphal progress of the True Faith to become the religion of the Roman Empire. Reaching the top of the staircase, Stainville had entered the throne-room of the Vatican Palace, the Sala Regia, where he fell to his knees three times, on entering, half-way across the room, and at the foot of the papal throne, where he was permitted to kiss the Pope’s slippered foot. When the audience was over, the triple genuflection was repeated, as the ambassador withdrew backwards, never daring to turn his back on Christ’s Vicar on Earth.

One can only guess what went through Stainville’s mind as he performed this ritual. It seems that he did not believe in Christianity, let alone in the authority of the Pope. His appointment in 1753 had been opposed by the papal Curia, outraged by his loose living and free thinking. Moreover, his audience in 1757 was to take his leave, for, thanks to the patronage of Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, he was being transferred to the court of Vienna, a move regarded by everyone outside Rome as a major promotion. When he returned to France as de facto first minister, he dealt the papacy a terrible blow by persuading Louis XV to expel the Jesuits, the most ultramontane of all religious orders. He also paved the way for their total dissolution in 1773. That a pope–in this case Clement XIV–could be bullied into dissolving an order whose members had all sworn him absolute obedience and which had been ‘the most important force in Catholic renewal’ (Ronnie Hsia) during the previous two centuries, showed how low the papacy had come in the world. Yet it still had much further to tumble before our period ended. If the vignette which best summed up the apogee of papal power was a penitentially clad Henry IV standing barefoot in the snow at Canossa

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