Pope Pius Vii Quotes

Would it be an indiscretion to ask to see those precious pills?" continued Beauchamp, hoping to take him at a disadvantage. "No, Monsieur," returned the count; and he drew from his pocket a marvelous bonbonniere, formed out of a single emerald, and closed by a golden lid, which unscrewed and gave passage to a small of greenish color, and about the size of a pea." ..."this is a magnificent emerald, and the largest I have ever seen," said Chateu-Renaud... "I had three similar ones," returned Monte Cristo; "I gave one to the Grand Signior, who mounted it in his saber; another to our holy father the pope, who had it set in his tiara, opposite to nearly as large, though not so fine a one, given by Emperor Napolen to his predecessor Pius VII. I kept the third for myself, and I had it hollowed out, which reduced its value, but rendered it more commodious for the purpose I intended it for." Every one looked at Monte Cristo with astonishment...

The Emperor Napoleon is said to have confronted Cardinal Consalvi, the secretary of state to Pope Pius VII, saying that he, Napoleon, would destroy the Church—to which the Cardinal deftly responded, “Oh my little man, you think you’re going to succeed in accomplishing what centuries of priests and bishops have tried and failed to do?

At the time when Pope Pius VII had to leave Rome, which had been conquered by revolutionary French, the committee of the Chamber of Commerce in London was considering the herring fishery. One member of the committee observed that, since the Pope had been forced to leave Rome, Italy was probably going to become a Protestant country. “Heaven help us,” cried another member. “What,” responded the first, “would you be upset to see the number of good Protestants increase?” “No,” the other answered, “it isn’t that, but suppose there are no more Catholics, what shall we do with our herring?”—Alexandre Dumas, Le grand dictionnaire de cuisine, 1873

Finally, has any single man had a greater long-term impact on Europe? In France, faced with the chaos and confusion caused by the Revolution and the Terror, he quickly restored peace, political equilibrium and a strong economy; he established religious freedom, while the concordat, which he signed with Pope Pius VII in 1801, restored good relations between Church and state. He maintained low prices for the basic foods; and he created the Code Napoléon of 1804, which remains the basis of French civil law and that of nearly thirty other countries as well. In Europe, he left a trail of pillage and destruction; but he also spread the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity the length and breadth of the continent, where such concepts were new and challenging indeed.

After 1798, Jenner devoted the rest of his life to the smallpox vaccination crusade. In the process he rapidly made influential converts who established vaccination as a major instrument of public health—Pope Pius VII at Rome, Luigi Sacco in Italy, Napoleon in France, and Thomas Jefferson in the United States. Unlike inoculation, which used the smallpox virus, vaccination had a low risk of serious complications for the individual and posed no risk to the community because it involved cowpox rather than smallpox. It did, however, pose problems that made the campaign against smallpox a difficult and protracted one. It was feared that Jenner’s initial technique of arm-to-arm vaccination of live virus could increase the danger of spreading other diseases, especially syphilis. In addition, Jenner made it a dogmatic article of faith that the immunity derived from vaccination was lifelong, steadfastly refusing to consider conflicting data. In fact, the immunity provided by vaccination proved to be of limited duration. The irrefutable evidence of disease among patients who had previously been vaccinated went a long way toward discrediting the procedure and promoting skepticism. (It has subsequently been demonstrated that smallpox immunity following vaccination lasts up to twenty years and that revaccination is required in order to guarantee lifelong protection.)

13. Another object calling for our common solicitude is the marriage of Christians, that pure alliance which Saint Paul has called a great sacrament in Jesus Christ and His Church. Let us stifle the bold opinions and rash innovations which can compromise the sanctity and indissolubility of its bonds. This recommendation has already been made to you in a special manner by the letters of Our predecessor, Pius VII, of happy memory. Yet the attacks of the enemy are constantly increasingly. Care must therefore be taken to teach the people that marriage, once lawfully contracted, can no more be dissolved; that God has imposed on the married whom He has joined together, the obligation of living in perpetual society, and that the knot which binds them can be severed only by death. Never forgetting that marriage is included in the circle of holy things, and placed, consequently, under the jurisdiction of the Church, the faithful will have under their eyes the laws of the Church in this matter; they will obey them with religious respect and fidelity, convinced that on their execution depend absolutely the rights, stability, and legitimacy of the conjugal union.

Religious Liberty as spoken of by the Popes was liberty of religion, not religions; these two concepts are not at all the same. The Popes have always affirmed that there must be liberty of religion, but not of all religions without distinction. There was tolerance of error and thus of other religions, but not at all the same rights for both truth and error. Pius VII treated this question very clearly. he protested to King Louis XVIII over the establishment in France of liberty of cults or religions, which had not existed before. "Insofar even as on decrees the liberty of every cult without distinction, one confounds truth and error and places at the same level with sects and faithless Judaism the holy and immaculate Bride of Christ, outside of which there is no salvation." So spoke Pius VII, and so have spoken all the Popes. One cannot put all religions on the same footing.