Giovanni Battista Caprara

Cardinal Caprara (standing) with Pope Pius VII during the coronation of Joséphine de Beauharnais by Emperor Napoleon I on December 2, 1804. (Detail of the painting by Jacques-Louis David , around 1806 )

Coat of arms of Cardinal Caprara, modern tracing

Giovanni Battista Caprara (born May 29, 1733 in Bologna ; † June 21, 1810 in Paris ) was Apostolic Nuncio in Cologne , cardinal legate in Paris and executor of the French Concordat of 1801 .

Life

Church career

Caprara was a son of Count Francesco Raimondo Montecuccoli and, together with his siblings, took the mother's surname, as there were no male descendants in their relationship. In 1751 Caprara received his doctorate from the University of La Sapienza ( Rome ) . Shortly afterwards he was appointed trainee lawyer at the two papal signatures . At the age of 25 he was vice-delegate in Ravenna (1758). On December 22nd, 1765 he was ordained a priest in Bologna . He was appointed titular archbishop of Iconium on December 1, 1766 . He was ordained bishop on December 8, 1766 in the Quirinal Palace in Rome by Pope Clement XIII. , Co-consecrators were Scipione Borghese , titular archbishop of Teodosia , and Ignazio Reali , titular archbishop of Athenae . In the same ceremony, Giovanni Archinto , who later became a cardinal, was ordained titular Archbishop of Philippi . On the same day Caprara was appointed papal assistant to the throne , on December 18, 1766 he became apostolic nuncio in Cologne.

Acting as a nuncio

He reached Cologne on April 14, 1767, where he had to deal with difficulties due to Febronianism and with conflicts between the three clerical electors . In the late spring of 1772 he made a detour to Holland and England. He reported on this to Rome that the situation of the Church in the Netherlands was developing favorably and that Jansenism was disappearing. As for England, he reported a friendly reception in London, where he received King George III from the imperial ambassador, Prince Antonio Barbiano di Belgioioso . was presented; Caprara also reported to the Cardinal Secretary of State that anti-papal sentiment in Great Britain had subsided.

When Pope Clement XIV abolished the Society of Jesus in 1773 , Nuncio Caprara tried to enforce the papal Breve Dominus ac Redemptor in the empire , but he saw himself exposed to great resistance from the electors of Cologne and the Palatinate , who were thereby exposed to the influence of Rome sought to withdraw. Important schools, such as the Tricoronatum in Cologne and schools in Ravenstein, Düsseldorf, Jülich, Düren and Münstereifel, continued to trust the Jesuits.

Citing his poor health, Caprara asked to be transferred to Lucerne, where it was quieter. In addition, this position was more highly endowed. On September 6, 1775 he was appointed nuncio in Lucerne, where he arrived on October 24, 1775. There he avoided any conflict for the sake of his health. At the end of 1784 he traveled to Pisa, where he received news of his imminent transfer to Vienna. Via Bologna and Cremona he returned to Lucerne to say goodbye there.

On May 7, 1785 he was appointed nuncio in Austria, Hungary and Bohemia. He arrived in Vienna on June 21, 1785 and remained nuncio there until January 31, 1793. He was well-balanced with Joseph II's church policy . Avoiding any conflict with the imperial court, he was of little use to the Roman Curia, and he left Rome without news of what was going on in the empire. Conversely, the imperial government showed so little respect for the nuncio that it completely ignored him during the revolution in the Duchy of Brabant when it asked Rome to mediate.

After the death of Joseph II (February 20, 1790), Caprara was present as a special envoy in Frankfurt am Main . There Leopold of Tuscany , the brother of Joseph II., Was elected Roman King (September 30, 1790) and German Emperor (October 9, 1790). Caprara's job would have been to prevent laws from being passed that ran counter to the interests of the Holy See . Caprara did not use the support that the Elector of Bavaria gave him and attracted the hostility of the Mainz delegation, which did not even want to recognize his accreditation certificate issued by the Pope . So he withdrew into a completely passive observer role and only on October 13th, belatedly, on behalf of the Pope, raised reservations of the Pope against some decisions of the electoral college, whose deliberations had already ended on October 4th. He returned to Vienna for a few months and left in May 1791 to spend a few months in Bad Pyrmont for health reasons . Out of disappointment with his work, the cardinal secretary of state replaced him as nuncio and Caprara was elevated to cardinal priest on June 18, 1792 ( title church Sant'Onofrio ).

In 1800 Caprara was appointed archbishop pro hac vice of Jesi , a small town between Ancona and Perugia . Caprara stayed on this “deportation post” for only two years until, after the Napoleonic Concordat negotiations of July 15, 1801, Napoleon himself had chosen Caprara as the executor of the Concordat, which he saw as a willing instrument of his own state church interests because of its weak character. In 1801 Caprara was named "Legate a latere". His yielding demeanor earned Caprara the nickname “ Jacobin Cardinal” . From 1802 Caprara was Archbishop of Milan . He performed the church ordination at the coronation of Emperor Napoleon I as King of Italy on May 28, 1805. He died in 1810 and was buried alongside other "heroes of the French nation" in the Panthéon in Paris .

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Caprara, Johann Baptista . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 2nd part. Publishing house of the typographic-literary-artistic establishment (L. C. Zamarski, C. Dittmarsch & Comp.), Vienna 1857, p. 276 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Rufin Steimer : The Papal Envoys in Switzerland from 1073–1873. Verlag Hans von Matt, Stans 1907 (with illustration by Caprara).
• Giuseppe Pignatelli:  CAPRARA MONTECUCCOLI, Giovanni Battista. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 19:  Cappi-Cardona. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1976.
• Jeannine Charon-Bourdas: La légation en France du Cardinal Caprara 1801–1808. La Documentation Française, Paris 1979, ISBN 2-86000-034-8 .
• Michael F. Feldkamp : Giovanni Battista Caprara (1733-1810). Papal nuncio in Cologne, cardinal legate in Paris and executor of the French Concordat. In: History Association for the Diocese of Aachen (Hrsg.): History in the Diocese of Aachen. Verlag Schmidt, Neustadt ad Aisch 2002, Volume 6, 2001/2002, pp. 139-164.
• Michael F. Feldkamp : Politically Naive or Careerist? Giovanni Battista Caprara (1733-1810): Papal diplomat on the threshold of the 19th century , in: Ders .: Imperial Church and Political Catholicism. Essays on church history and church legal history of modern times (= Propylaea of ​​the Christian Occident, Volume 3), Patrimonium-Verlag, Aachen 2019, pp. 97–117 ISBN 978-3-86417-120-8 .
• Georg May : The work of reconciliation of the papal legate Giovanni B. Caprara. The Reconciliation of the Clergy and Religious Members 1801–1808 (Canonical Studies and Texts Volume 59) . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-428-13848-7 .

Web links

• Caprara, Giovanni Battista. In: Salvador Miranda : The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. ( Florida International University website), accessed July 14, 2016.
• Entry on Giovanni Battista Caprara Montecuccoli on catholic-hierarchy.org ; Retrieved October 26, 2016.

predecessor	Office	successor
Filippo Maria Visconti	Archbishop of Milan 1802–1810	Karl Kajetan II von Gaisruck