Pope Crowns Amidst Turmoil: Pius VII's Papier-Mâché Tiara

The new Pope's tiara was made of papier-mache because the real one had been seized by French revolutionaries. Pius VII was crowned on March 21, 1800, in Venice rather than Rome, wearing a makeshift crown because Napoleon's armies had looted the papal treasury and imprisoned his predecessor, Pius VI, who died in French captivity. The papacy had not looked this weak since the Avignon exile five centuries earlier. Barnaba Chiaramonti had been elected pope after a conclave that lasted three months, conducted in Venice because Rome was under French military occupation. The cardinals chose him partly because he was seen as moderate enough to negotiate with Napoleon, who had dissolved the Papal States and declared Rome a republic. The Venetian ceremony, held in the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, reflected a Church in crisis. Pius VII proved more politically shrewd than his enemies expected. He negotiated the Concordat of 1801 with Napoleon, restoring Catholicism as the majority religion of France while preserving the Republic's control over Church appointments. When Napoleon crowned himself Emperor in 1804, Pius attended the ceremony in Paris but was deliberately sidelined when Napoleon placed the crown on his own head. The relationship eventually collapsed. Napoleon annexed the Papal States in 1809 and imprisoned Pius VII for five years. But the Pope outlasted the Emperor. After Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo, Pius VII returned to Rome in triumph and the Congress of Vienna restored the Papal States. The man who had been crowned in papier-mache ended his pontificate having reasserted papal authority across Catholic Europe.