Selections of Pope Pius VII’s writings on the Jews

Scholarly Research Dossier

I. Written Document: Post Tam Diuturnas (April 29, 1814)

Document Identification

FieldDetail
Document typeApostolic Brief (Breve Apostolico)
AddresseeMgr. Étienne-Marie de Boulogne, Bishop of Troyes, France
Date29 April 1814
Place issuedCesena
Original languageLatin
Latin sourceSermons et Discours Inédits de M. de Boulogne, Évêque de Troyes, vol. 1 (Vander Schelden, Gand, 1827), pp. xciii ff.
French translationPaix Intérieure des Nations, ed. Benedictines of Solesmes
English translationJohn S. Daly (reproduced below)

Historical Context

Upon his return from Napoleonic captivity in 1814, Pius VII learned that the newly drafted French constitutional charter (decreed by the Paris Senate) contained Article 22, which proclaimed “liberty of religion and of conscience” and guaranteed state assistance and patronage to the ministers of all religions. The Pope wrote this brief — directed through the Bishop of Troyes to King Louis XVIII — to formally protest those articles as injurious to the Catholic Faith.

The Adversus Judaeos Passage

“For when the liberty of all ‘religions’ is indiscriminately asserted, by this very fact truth is confounded with error and the holy and immaculate Spouse of Christ, the Church, outside of which there can be no salvation, is set on a par with the sects of heretics and with Judaic perfidy itself. For when favour and patronage is promised even to the sects of heretics and their ministers, not only their persons, but also their very errors, are tolerated and fostered: a system of errors in which is contained that fatal and never sufficiently to be deplored HERESY which, as St. Augustine says (de Haeresibus, no. 72), ‘asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth: which is so absurd that it seems incredible to me.'”

— Pope Pius VII, Post Tam Diuturnas, 29 April 1814 (trans. John S. Daly)

Theological Category

The phrase perfidia Judaica (“Judaic perfidy”) deployed here is a formulaic term of long-standing in Catholic canonical and liturgical tradition, appearing in the ancient Good Friday Oremus pro perfidis Judaeis (“Let us pray for the perfidious Jews“) and in numerous earlier papal bulls. Pius VII’s use of the term is not the subject of a document specifically about Jews; rather, it appears in an ecclesiological and constitutional argument. Its function is supersessionist and theological: Judaism is placed alongside heresy as a paradigm of religious error, and granting them legal equality with the Church is characterized as an offense against truth. The theological posture belongs to the classical Adversus Judaeos tradition of Jewish-Christian polemic inherited from patristic and medieval sources.

II. Administrative Action: Re-institution of the Roman Ghetto (1814–1815)

Summary

Upon the restoration of Papal rule over Rome and the Papal States following Napoleon’s defeat, Pius VII — despite the advice of his progressive Secretary of State, Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, and over the protests of the Austrian government — reinstated the mandatory Jewish Ghetto of Rome and restored the full suite of pre-Napoleonic anti-Jewish canonical restrictions.

Timeline

DateEvent
15 Feb. 1798General Berthier proclaims the Roman Republic; the Ghetto system is legally dissolved on 20 February 1798; Jews are free to live outside its walls.
1799Papal States temporarily restored; ghetto immediately reestablished; Jews who had left its confines compelled to return.
1808–1814Napoleonic occupation of Rome; papal authority suspended; ghetto again dissolved; Jews emancipated under French law.
May 1814Pius VII returns to Rome after his release from captivity.
1814–1815Pius VII reinstates the mandatory ghetto confinement, nightly gate closures, occupational restrictions, compulsory conversionary sermons, and other pre-Napoleonic discriminatory measures.
Mid-1814 to end of 1818Sixty women and children are removed from the ghetto and brought to the Casa dei Catecumeni (House of Catechumens) for forced conversion proceedings.

What Was Re-instituted

According to the scholarly literature (see sources below), the Pius VII restoration reinstated the following elements of the pre-Napoleonic regime:

  • Mandatory ghetto confinement: Jews required by law to reside within the walled ghetto district in Rome.
  • Nightly gate closures: Ghetto gates locked every evening.
  • Occupational restrictions: Jews barred from most trades and skilled professions, confined largely to secondhand dealing and pawnbroking.
  • Compulsory conversionary sermons: Jewish residents required to attend Catholic sermons designed to induce conversion.
  • Educational restrictions: No schools teaching non-religious subjects permitted within the ghetto; Jewish children forbidden to attend schools outside its walls or to enter professions.
  • Acts of ritual degradation: Humiliating rituals associated with the Christian Carnival season were reinstated.
  • House of Catechumens operations: Resumed forcible removal of individuals — particularly infants and children — from the ghetto for conversion proceedings.

Political Context: Consalvi’s Opposition

Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, Pius VII’s own Secretary of State and one of the most reform-minded Church statesmen of the era, urged moderation and opposed the most oppressive aspects of the re-institution. The Austrian imperial government similarly appealed to Pius VII to adopt a more modern approach to the Jewish question. Pius VII nonetheless followed the conservative curial majority and restored the ancien régime in its essentials. Consalvi “worked diligently, until the Pope’s death in 1823, to usher the Church into the contemporary world, which included easing the social and political degradation of the Jewish people,” but with limited success against the curial consensus.

III. Primary and Secondary Sources

A. Primary Source (Textual Document)

  1. Pius VII.Post Tam Diuturnas [Apostolic Brief to the Bishop of Troyes]. 29 April 1814.

B. Secondary Sources: Re-institution of the Ghetto

  1. Kertzer, David I.The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
    • Kertzer documents in detail that “with the restoration of the Papal States in 1814 following the defeat of Napoleon’s armies, there was an opportunity for a new policy in the exercise of papal power toward the Jews. But Pope Pius VII rejected the appeal of the Austrian government and the advice of his own secretary of state, following instead the conservative majority of the curia and reinstituting the worst aspects of the earlier status of Jews in the papal domain.”
    • Restored measures included: “mandatory ghettos, particularly oppressive in Rome, where the overcrowded, squalid conditions seemed appalling even to a Vatican commission instructed to investigate. Also restored were the requirements of attendance at conversionary sermons and acts of ritual degradation associated with the Christian Carnival. No schools teaching nonreligious subjects were permitted in the ghetto, and Jewish children were forbidden to attend schools outside its walls, or to engage in professions or skilled occupations.”
    • Review citing these passages: Coppa, Frank J.The Papacy, the Jews, and the Holocaust. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006. (pp. 109–112.)
    • Wikipedia, “Roman Ghetto.” (Citing standard historical scholarship.)
      • “With the exception of brief periods under Napoleon from 1808 to 1815 and under the Roman Republics of 1798–99 and 1849, the ghetto of Rome was controlled by the papacy until the capture of Rome in 1870.”
      • “When the Papal States were restored in 1799, the ghetto was reestablished and Jews who had left its confines were compelled to return.”
      • Wikipedia: Roman Ghetto
    • Wikipedia, “Pope Pius VII.”
      • “Under Napoleonic rule, the Jewish Roman Ghetto had been abolished, and Jews were free to live and move where they pleased. Following the restoration of Papal rule, Pius VII re-instituted the confinement of Jews to the Ghetto, having the doors closed at night.”
      • Wikipedia: Pope Pius VII
    • Religion Fandom Wiki, “Pope Pius VII.” (Summarizing the historical record.)
      • “Under Napoleonic rule, the Jewish Roman Ghetto had been abolished and Jews were free to live and move where they would. Following the restoration of Papal rule, Pius VII re-instituted the confinement of Jews to the Ghetto, having the doors closed at nighttime.”
      • Religion Wiki Fandom: Pope Pius VII
    • Grokipedia, “Roman Ghetto.” (Drawing on standard historiography.)
      • “Upon the restoration of papal rule after Napoleon’s defeat, Pope Pius VII returned to Rome in May 1814 and promptly reinstated the ghetto in 1815, reinstating confinement, nightly gate closures, occupational limits, and other discriminatory measures.”
      • Grokipedia: Roman Ghetto
    • Olson, Eric. “Catholic Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Pope Pius XII.” Historia (Eastern Illinois University). 2015. (p. 89.)