The Republics at Rome and Naples 651
mere opportunism or timidity. Cardinal Chiaramonti, the later Pius VII, it should
be recalled, had accepted the Cisalpine Republic in his diocese near Bologna, itself
recently detached from the papal states. He had delivered his famous Christmas
homily, on Christianity and democracy, only a few weeks before his fellow-
cardinals gave their blessing to the new order at Rome.
From the cathedral chapter of St. Peter’s itself came a finance minister and vari-
ous other officers for the new government. Various parish priests became known
for “republican” sermons. Two friars put on uniforms as battalion commanders. A
Dominican joined the new Istituto Nazionale. Most inclined of all clerics to repub-
licanism were those called scolopi, an order of regulars who conducted a system of
schools. Catholics who felt strongly that the church was too wealthy for its own
good, or that some of its property could be better used for other purposes, or that
governmental power should be wielded by laymen, had no reason, in principle, to
oppose the Republic. The extent of such “Jansenist” ideas in Rome is uncertain
(common as they were elsewhere in Italy), but such ideas did not have to be Jan-
senist. The ex- Jesuit Bolgeni was already well known for anti- Jansenist writings.
He rejected in Jansenism the idea that the Church should return to an original
purity. Arguing, instead, that it should change with the times and accommodate
itself to modern conditions, and that spiritual and temporal power could be sepa-
rated, he took the oath to the Republic, and wrote a pamphlet to explain why good
Catholics could be equally loyal to the exiled Pope and to the new Republic at the
same time.^17
It is agreed, by the two best recent authorities on the subject, that the desire for
church reform and for political and administrative modernization were both fun-
damental in the revolution of 1798. It is agreed that the “Jacobin” clergy, while
surprisingly numerous, were a minority among ecclesiastics in Rome. To what ex-
tent they were early “Catholic Democrats,” to what extent the “Jacobin Evangeli-
cals,” the evangelici giacobini, in whom deism and Theophilanthropy were often
mixed with appeals to the Bible, were or were not “in the bosom of the Church,”
or were or were not Jansenists, or even influenced by Calvin, are matters best left to
Italians to discuss and to Catholics to define. It is clear that some of their ideas
waited a long time for realization. In particular, the Roman Question, or question
posed by the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, while first presented in actual poli-
tics by the Republic of 1798, was not settled until the twentieth century.
The Republic, in its life of a little over a year, never took on even the degree of
solidity enjoyed by the Cisalpine. It was never more than a project, and even the
zealot Mangourit, when he passed through, reported that it had organized nothing
but anarchy. It lived in the shadow of imminent, and later actual, war. It was di-
vided from the beginning by incurable fissures, between French and Italians, be-
tween Romans and revolutionaries from other Italian states, between civilian and
military authorities, between governing personnel and journalistic extremists, be-
tween Rome and the outlying parts of the former papal dominions. Territorial
consistency was minimal; an abortive “Ancona Republic” had to be brought in by
17 A. Quacquarelli, La teologia antigiansenista di G. V. Bolgeni, 1733–1811 (Mazara, n.d., about
1950), 85–93.