The Baroque Stage: Religion and Politics in the Age of Grandeur

The 18th century produced countless vedute—panoramic landscape paintings—serving as souvenirs for aristocrats on their Italian “Grand Tour.” Among the most remarkable was Giovanni Paolo Pannini’s The French Ambassador to the Holy See Leaving St Peter’s Square, Rome of 1757. While the foreground features a procession of ten opulent carriages, the true protagonist of the canvas is St. Peter’s Basilica, the grandest church in Christendom. Its dome, designed by Michelangelo, its façade by Maderno, and its encircling colonnade by Bernini, collectively formed an architectural affirmation of the Pope’s supreme authority: as Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, and successor to St. Peter.

When Count Stainville (later Duke of Choiseul) arrived for an audience with the Pope, he descended at the foot of the Scala Regia—the grandest staircase in the Vatican, designed by Bernini in the 1660s—where he encountered Bernini’s equestrian statue of Emperor Constantine. This was no accident: Constantine’s conversion marked Christianity’s transformation into the Roman Empire’s state religion. After ascending the staircase, Stainville entered the Sala Regia, knelt three times (upon entry, at the room’s center, and before the papal throne), and kissed the Pope’s slipper. The ceremony concluded with three more genuflections, and the ambassador retreated backward—never daring to turn his back on Christ’s earthly representative.

The Illusion of Power: Papal Authority in Decline

What thoughts crossed Stainville’s mind during this elaborate ritual? A known skeptic of both Christianity and papal authority, he had already provoked Rome’s ire with his libertine lifestyle and freethinking views. His 1757 audience was a farewell; thanks to Madame de Pompadour’s influence, he was transferring to the Vienna court—a promotion in everyone’s eyes except the Vatican’s. Upon returning to France as de facto prime minister, he dealt the papacy a crushing blow by persuading Louis XV to expel the Jesuits, the order most devoted to papal absolutism. His actions paved the way for the Jesuits’ dissolution in 1773.

The fact that Pope Clement XIV was coerced into disbanding an order whose members had sworn absolute obedience—and which had been, in historian Ronnie Hsia’s words, “the most dynamic force in the Catholic revival”—illustrates how far the papacy’s standing had fallen. By the century’s end, it would plummet further. If the zenith of papal power was symbolized by Emperor Henry IV standing barefoot in the snow at Canossa in 1077, begging Pope Gregory VII for forgiveness, its nadir came in 1809 when Napoleon’s troops arrested Pius VII in the Quirinal Palace and hauled him off to captivity.

The Paradox of Baroque Catholicism

In ancien régime Europe, the gap between symbolic power and real authority was hardly unique to the papacy—but it was especially glaring in Rome. Popes and their staunchest supporters (“ultramontanists”) were trapped in absolutist rhetoric that brooked no flexibility. Though papal infallibility (the dogma that the Pope is preserved from error when defining doctrines ex cathedra) wasn’t formally declared until Vatican I in 1870, the idea had circulated for centuries. By the late 17th century, the term “infallible” was increasingly applied to papal teaching authority, championed most influentially by St. Alfonso Liguori (1696–1787), founder of the Redemptorists.

Yet theological distinctions between the Pope’s personal and official roles blurred in practice. Renaissance-era papal scandals—nepotism, simony, and outright debauchery—had faded, but human frailties remained evident enough to cast doubt on claims of infallibility. After the austerity of Counter-Reformation popes, Urban VIII’s reign (1623–1644) marked a return to extravagance. Patronage of the arts now served not just to instruct the faithful (as decreed by the Council of Trent) but to entertain. As Judith Hook observed, Urban VIII created “the most splendid and magnificent Baroque court in Europe.” In the process, he enriched his Barberini family: two nephews and a brother-in-law became cardinals, while another nephew amassed titles (military commander, governor, prince) and wealth. The Palazzo Barberini—with its 3,000-seat theater—stood as architectural nepotism (nepotism itself deriving from papal favors to nipoti, or nephews). Even sacred spaces bore the family’s stamp: Bernini’s towering baldacchino in St. Peter’s featured Barberini bees gilded on its columns. A contemporary satirist quipped:

“Write on Urban’s monument:
He fattened his bees but starved his flock.”

The Twilight of the Papal States

The 16 popes from 1644 to 1815 were elderly Italian nobles, their average age at election nearing 70. Clement XII (elected at 78 in 1730) was blind within a year; the relatively youthful Clement XI (elected at 51 in 1700) presided over what Owen Chadwick called “more disasters than any pope since the Reformation.” Even capable pontiffs like Benedict XIV (1740–1758) faced an irreversible decline in papal influence.

A turning point came in 1768, when the Duke of Parma—backed by Bourbon relatives in France, Naples, and Spain—defied Clement XIII’s In Coena Domini bull (which threatened excommunication for secular interference in church affairs). The Pope’s impotence was stark: France occupied Avignon, Naples seized Benevento, and Spain verbally backed Parma. As Choiseul sneered, “The Pope is a fool, and his secretary of state an idiot.” Clement’s death in 1769 ended the standoff, but the bull was never proclaimed again—marking, if not the end of papal temporal power, a decisive step toward its erosion.

Legacy and Modern Echoes

The 18th-century papacy’s paradox—its cultural grandeur amid political decline—mirrored broader tensions between faith and Enlightenment. While Voltaire mocked popes as proof of the Church’s “divine survival despite crimes,” the Vatican endured. When Stalin scoffed, “How many divisions does the Pope have?” he underestimated the resilience of spiritual authority. By the 20th century, the papacy would outlast empires, its global flock larger than ever.

From Baroque spectacle to Napoleonic captivity, the 18th-century papacy’s story is one of adaptation and survival—a testament to the enduring allure of Rome, even as its earthly power waned.