The aim of the study is to analyse Austro-papal relations in the period 1838–1848 in the context of the Italian liberal-national movement. The reactionary, backward, absolutist regime of the papal government had often been the cause of the crises in the Papal States in the pre-March period, with the most significant one being in 1831, when it was only through Austrian military intervention that the papal regime survived. The papal government was unwilling to change the course of its internal policy and transform the Papal States for the sake of both its subjects and its government. Therefore, when it came to reforming the papal regime, Metternich’s lifelong advising of the Pope was like beating a dead horse. Austria’s readiness to intervene militarily whenever requested by the Pope was the most important part of Metternich’s diplomatic passivity within his papal policy during the 1840s, although none of the local uprisings in this period required the intervention of Austrian troops The change in the Austrian chancellor’s approach to Rome emerged because of the reform course of Pius IX, who was elected Pope in the summer of 1846. The Pope’s utter disinterest and opposition to Austria after 1846 eventually resulted in the ultimate fall of Metternich’s papal policy.
During the 18th century, an increasingly strong individualistic attitude in the way of understanding the relationship between man and the tangible world spread throughout Europe. The legal institution which, more than any other, suffered from the effects of this reductionism was the Property as victim of incredible compression in comparison to medieval world. The exclusive model that the new Enlightenment and the bourgeois mentality wanted to adopt was the individual Property, to the detriment of all those forms of possession documented in the Middle Ages. The present study intends to investigate, in the geographical context of the Papal States, the great juridical dispute between the individualistic model – endorsed by the Sacred Legislator – and that of a collectivistic nature defended by the Community.
The objective of this study is to explain the negative consequences of France’s occupation of the Papal city of Ancona in February 1832. This event occurred against the Pope’s will, yet at a time when France and the Papal States were at peace. The whole incident represented a serious breach of international law, and was criticised throughout Europe not just by sovereigns, diplomats and politicians, but also by lower social groups. In the long-term, its significance lay in reducing the faith of European societies in the fairness of the Great Powers’ policies, and the stability of the European system of states which had until then been guaranteed by the outcome of the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
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