Friedrich Engel-Janosi, French and Austrian Political Advice to Pius IX, 1846–1848 (1952)

Friedrich Engel-Janosi’s archival journal article examines French and Austrian efforts to guide Pius IX’s temporal government from his election in June 1846 through the revolutionary crisis and his flight to Gaëta in November 1848. Drawing on diplomatic correspondence in Paris and Vienna, it traces the interaction between great-power rivalry, conservative cooperation, and the practical difficulties of papal reform. Its central tension is that both powers wanted an effective government capable of preserving the temporal sovereignty of the pope, yet their advice differed over how reform could strengthen authority without surrendering it. Neither diplomatic influence nor Pius’s initial popularity supplied the coherent governing power that both considered indispensable.

The article first establishes the inheritance of Gregory XVI’s reign: administrative discontent, the unfulfilled reform expectations surrounding the great powers’ memorandum of 1831, and Austrian frustration with sovereigns who administered rather than governed. Pius entered office critical of existing arrangements and prejudiced against Metternich’s Austria, partly because of its continuing Josephinist institutions. His early intentions included amnesty, railways, and greater public accessibility, but Engel-Janosi cautions that the evidence does not establish a fully elaborated political program at his election.

Metternich’s initial advice distinguished centralized government from decentralized administration, pardon from the cancellation of guilt, and improvements undertaken as a sovereign duty from concessions that surrendered rights. His opposition was therefore not simply to reform:

However, Metternich gave an equal stress to the necessity of administrative reforms in the Pontifical States, and to him it was a postulate of duty and wisdom to introduce them.

The decisive question was whether change expressed authority or exposed its weakness. Metternich wanted the papacy to lead the sound elements of society, not furnish revolutionary parties with a sacred banner. Yet Austrian ambassador Rudolf Lützow increasingly lacked access to the pope. His complaints of French predominance reveal how advice depended on confidence, while Austria’s extension of its occupation from the fortress into the city of Ferrara in 1847 undermined the trust Vienna sought. Diplomatic isolation and Austrian coercion reinforced one another.

The French representative, Pellegrino Rossi, enjoyed warmer relations with Pius but encountered another kind of frustration: sympathetic listening without sufficiently decisive execution. He believed timely, moderate reforms could satisfy public opinion while preserving the foundations of the state. Administrative reconstruction, changes in personnel, and increased lay participation would strengthen rather than dissolve papal government. Pius’s reluctance to injure individuals and his resistance to secularization repeatedly obstructed this program. Rossi’s interpretation located the difficulty in the pope’s ordering of his responsibilities:

Pius still felt himself to be first of all a bishop, and only in the second place did he consider himself a king.

Engel-Janosi gives particular attention to Rossi’s memorandum of July 1847. Rossi distinguished a national party, increasingly attached to federation rather than centralization, from a reform party; both looked toward Pius. He recommended replacing unpopular officials, establishing ministerial and consultative institutions, standardizing provincial administration, and reforming municipal government and justice. The memorandum’s governing claim was temporal: measures sufficient in 1846 no longer sufficed in 1847. Delay consumed the exceptional freedom of action created by the pope’s early popularity and increased the concessions subsequently required.

The contrast with Vienna concerned the political meaning of Italy as well as the pace of reform:

To Metternich political value could be attributed only to the concrete single states which composed the peninsula.

Nevertheless, Guizot and Metternich moved toward cooperation during 1847. Their correspondence treated the preservation of social order as more fundamental than diplomatic rivalry. Both feared governmental weakness, although Rossi continued to advocate reforms that Austrian diplomats regarded as revolutionary encouragement. Engel-Janosi thus distinguishes convergence between the ministers from continuing antagonism between their representatives in Rome. Lützow blamed French influence for the deterioration of temporal authority; Rossi maintained that a conservative-liberal majority could still be organized and led.

As revolution spread through Italy in early 1848, Rossi’s advice moved from administrative reform toward constitutional government. Developments in Naples made further delay increasingly dangerous, while demands for war against Austria threatened to overwhelm the moderate program. Constitutional adaptation, however, exposed the distinctive problem of papal sovereignty:

How could the spiritual and temporal affairs be properly separated from each other? How should the Pontiff be separated from the king?

Rossi believed that a workable separation could increase the Church’s moral authority even while limiting its temporal power. Engel-Janosi characterizes this confidence as liberal optimism rather than demonstrating that the institutional problem had been solved.

The final section follows the collapse of the diplomatic framework itself. Revolution removed Guizot and Metternich; Rossi lost his embassy post, and Lützow departed amid hostility toward Austria. French republican representatives nevertheless continued seeking influence through moderate government, protection, and eventually military assistance. Ambassador d’Harcourt encouraged Italian independence and helped arrange Pius’s escape after Rossi’s assassination. The ending turns from advice offered to experience acquired: whether Pius would remain politically unchanged or be permitted to learn from catastrophe. The article’s significance lies in showing why neither benevolent reform nor conservative prescription could resolve the unstable relationship between spiritual office, temporal sovereignty, national aspirations, and effective government.