Decapited turk head is relatively popular symbol in Eastern European heraldry.
King Theodore's Corsica
- Thread starter Carp
- Start date
No more so than adopting an instrument of torture and execution for a religion.
An Opening Chasm
An Opening Chasm
Pope Clement XIII
Pope Clement XIII
In January of 1760, Pope Benedict XIV died of gout. A scholarly and upstanding pontiff, Benedict was generally well-regarded and his death evoked kind eulogies even from beyond the Catholic world.[1] Within the Catholic hierarchy, however, Benedict’s tenure was evaluated more critically. The main objection to Benedict’s reign was that he had been too lax in opposing the growing trend of “regalism” or “jurisdictionalism,” the subjection of the Church to state and royal authority.
Conflicts between royal and ecclesiastical power were nothing new in Europe, but a new ideal of the absolutist state had emerged since the late 17th century - rationalized, bureaucratized, and centralized, with the monarch permitting no internal rivals to his authority. This ideal of “enlightened absolutism” was not fully realized anywhere, but it represented a vision of society that was incompatible with preserving the old balance of power between church and state. The Catholic Church had long enjoyed a special legal, political, and economic status in secular society, but its unique position was coming under increasing attack from ministers who sought to consolidate royal power and philosophes who mocked the Church’s privileges as founded upon nothing more than dusty tradition and irrational superstition. Venerable institutions like the Inquisition, ecclesiastical mortmain, the parallel system of ecclesiastical law, and the Society of Jesus were all targeted as intolerable affronts to rational governance and royal power.
Although he did not welcome this trend, Benedict had tried to address it through adaptation and compromise. The pontiff believed that by yielding to royal courts on strictly political and legal matters, he would enjoy a freer hand in spiritual matters. Regalism, after all, was not the only threat to the Church. The Catholic faith - perhaps religion itself - was being undermined by the heretical tracts of impious philosophes who openly embraced deism or even atheism. Benedict considered this intellectual secularism to be a more dangerous enemy than regalist ministers, who could serve as Rome’s allies against perversions of the faith. Accordingly, he signed many generous concordats with Catholic states, offering concessions that alarmed many of his own cardinals and ministers who feared that Benedict was ceding ancient privileges too readily and merely encouraging greater usurpations.[2] Although the Curia obeyed him while he lived, after Benedict’s death there was broad agreement within the College of Cardinals that Benedict had gone too far. His successor, they believed, needed to take a firmer stand against the regalist threat.
The man they chose, the Venetian Carlo Rezzonico, was in many ways a compromise candidate between the more hard-line cardinals (the “zelanti”) and the representatives of the Catholic monarchies. Rezzonico - thereafter Clement XIII - was known as pious but not fanatical, friendly to the Jesuits but not their devoted partisan. What mattered most to the conclave, however, was that he was unequivocal in his commitment to arresting both creeping regalism and Enlightenment secularism. He firmly believed that the authority of the Church in society had to be preserved against both its political and philosophical enemies, who too often had seen Benedict’s eagerness for conciliation as weakness.
Certainly this was true of King Theodore of Corsica, who despite being among the weakest of Europe’s sovereigns ultimately proved himself to be one of the boldest regalists of all. Cardinal Carlo Alberto Cavalchini, who had negotiated the Concordat of 1753 as Apostolic Visitor to Corsica, had seen this coming; he had warned the pope that Theodore might be encouraged, not pacified, by the significant concessions Benedict had authorized. It did not take long for Cavalchini to be proven entirely correct. Almost immediately after the concordat was signed Theodore began to renege on his promises, particularly when it came to returning Church estates seized by the naziunali. Citing his state’s financial difficulties, the king continually delayed the return of these lands, which he continued to administer and profit from.
What made Theodore notorious in Rome, however, was not his usurpation of property but his position in the vanguard of religious liberty. Battling the “tolerantism” of the philosophes was a major preoccupation of Catholic apologists who saw religious liberty as inextricably linked with “indifferentism,” deism, and atheism. To his great infamy in Rome, Theodore had far exceeded the philosophes by conjuring religious liberty from the page into the real world, and in a form that went too far even for some “tolerantist” writers. It was not merely that Theodore welcomed the Jews [3] - Tuscany long done that in Livorno, and Genoa was lately seeking to do the same - but that Jews in Corsica suffered none of the “disabilities” that dogged them everywhere else in the Catholic world. There were no ghettos, no badges, no (unique) taxes, no mandatory sermons, no restrictions on land ownership or profession - in other words, nothing to separate Jews from Catholics in any formal respect. Clement was not particularly antisemitic by the standards of 18th century popes, but this flew in the face of Catholic doctrine, which called for the strict separation of Jews from Catholic society. Curial officials denounced Theodore’s policies as “dangerous to religion and morality.”
Theodore had arrived on the political scene at a time when religious tolerance was the subject of intense philosophical debate across the continent. The philosophes, typified by Voltaire and his war of words against “l'infâme,” were inveterate opponents of religious fanaticism and championed the cause of tolerance. Yet this did not necessarily mean that they were well disposed towards the Jews, as many of the philosophes considered the Jewish people to be a prime example of a fanatical and superstitious culture, just as unenlightened and retrograde as the Catholic Church which Voltaire so despised. When it came to the Jews, the key question debated by the philosophes was whether they could be “regenerated” and cured of the defects of their religion, as Montesquieu proposed; or whether their corruption was essential to their “Asiatic” nature, as Voltaire argued.
Accordingly, while Theodore was generally well-regarded among the enlightened men of letters, the love was neither universal nor given without qualifications. Montesquieu was among the most prominent voices of approval; before his death in 1755, he offered some generally positive thoughts on independent Corsica and Theodore’s religious liberty, which he thought to be prophetic for the future of Europe. Voltaire, in contrast, always considered Theodore to be a somewhat risible figure and thought Theodoran tolerance to be a quixotic enterprise on an island of superstitious Catholics and fanatical Jews. The great Encyclopedist Denis Diderot had praised Theodore’s rule, although he also offered sharp criticism for some of the king’s decisions (like establishing a hereditary nobility). His comrade, the extremely prolific but lesser-known Encyclopedist Louis de Jaucourt, a liberal noble and fervent abolitionist, was an ardent Theodoran admirer and ended up writing the glowing entry for Corsica in the Encyclopédie. A more mixed assessment was offered by David Hume, who in 1762 penned a critique of “what we may call absolute, or Theodoran liberty.”[4] No such ambiguity was present in the writings of the so-called anti-philosophes, who were united in their condemnation. Giambattista Roberti, a Jesuit professor of philosophy at Bologna, published a scathing attack on Theodoran “tolerantism,” while Claude-Adrien Nonnotte, another Jesuit polemicist, spared a moment from his work Les Erreurs de Voltaire to ridicule Theodore and Corsican “indifferentism.”
Theodore had no aspirations to be a philosopher, and did not directly respond to his critics. The king was too conscious of his image, however, to simply ignore what was said of him, and he sent letters of appreciation to his prominent defenders. He exchanged correspondence with Jaucourt and wrote at least one letter to Diderot offering his aid to the Encyclopédie (although it is unclear if any such aid ever materialized). The king’s most consequential correspondence, however, was with the controversial philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau, who had offered words of praise for the Corsicans in his work Du contrat social.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau found himself in considerable difficulty after the publication of Émile, a book which focused mainly on Rousseau’s theory of education but included a chapter on religion which Voltaire described as “forty pages against Christianity, among the boldest ever known.” The book was condemned and burned in both France and Rousseau’s native Geneva, and he was threatened with arrest. Whether Theodore had actually read the book is unclear, but upon hearing of Rousseau’s trouble, the king sent him a letter which caught Rousseau by surprise. He not only offered encouragement, but enclosed a sum of money and proposed that Rousseau come to Corsica where he would be free to live and write.
Although he was deeply touched by Theodore’s unsolicited generosity, Rousseau declined Theodore’s offer of protection. It was not in Rousseau’s nature to follow after royal patronage; he had famously dodged a royal audience with King Louis XV years earlier and refused a royal pension, to the great bewilderment of his friends. But aloofness proved harder to sustain when under persecution, and the precarity of his situation eventually persuaded Rousseau to reconsider his earlier refusal. Gradually he seemed to grow ever more infatuated with the idea of visiting this near-mythical land of rustic freedom.
In March of 1763, he boarded a ship from Nice to Bastia, where upon his arrival he was furnished with lodging in the city and a modest stipend at the expense of the royal household.[A] An invitation to court followed, which Rousseau characteristically declined, claiming illness from the voyage. Theodore, however, was not King Louis; a week later the king simply rode across town and visited Rousseau himself. There are regrettably no records of their private conversation, which was to be their only face-to-face meeting, but his later letters suggest that Rousseau was favorably impressed with the king. Rousseau was also visited by a delegation from the Constitutional Society led by cavaliere Geronimo Pozzo di Borgo, who had organized an “expedition” of Asphodelians to Bastia for the sole purpose of meeting the great man of letters now on Corsican soil. Rousseau humored these philosophical enthusiasts by allowing himself to be inducted as a member. This did not make much difference to Rousseau, who thought it little more than a lark, but the stature of the Society could only benefit from their association with one of the best-known philosophers in Europe. Despite his warm welcome, however, Rousseau was not very impressed by Bastia - perhaps unsurprising from the man who opined that “cities are the abyss of the human species.”
Rousseau considered leaving the island, but was convinced to stay a while longer by Domenico Arrighi, a respected judge and statesman who was notable for having served as the president of the first consulta generale in 1750. Arrighi, interested by Rousseau’s notions on legislation, became a friend of the philosophe and introduced him to a number of his fellow Balagnesi, including the writer and historian Bonfiglio Guelfucci and Count Giovan Paolo Quilici, the son of a revolutionary general. Count Quilici regaled Rousseau with his own stories of the revolution as well as the deeds of his late father, who had led the Corsican forces at the siege of Calvi alongside the king. The count then offered to put Rousseau up in a cottage in his own hometown of Speloncato in the eastern Balagna, which he suggested was closer to the “authentic” Corsica than cramped and squalid Bastia. Rousseau resolved to at least visit this “cradle of liberty,” and ended up residing in this hilltop village for several years until it was safe to return to the continent. In Speloncato he devoted himself to the task of defending his works and attacking the Genevan government, which took the form of a series of published letters known collectively as the Lettres écrites de Corse (“Letters written from Corsica”).
Speloncato, overlooking the Balagnese coast
Pope Clement could not have seen Theodore’s sheltering of Rousseau as a positive sign. As cardinal, Clement had supported the condemnation of Diderot’s Encyclopédie and other works of the philosophes, and one of his first acts as pope was the publication of a strongly-worded encyclical “against the books of the libertines and the impious.” Émile was officially condemned in Rome in September 1762, accused of containing “enormous perversities” and “evil doctrines against the faith.” Rousseau, of course, was only one man, but his decision to flee to Corsica rather than capitulating to religious persecution and censorship made him a hero to anticlerical radicals. Theodore was now resented in Rome not only as an abettor of “tolerantism” in his own kingdom, but a promoter of impiety on the broader European stage.
Backlash against the king’s policies, however, was not just a foreign problem. In November of 1763 a local village priest stirred up a crowd in the Borgu of Ajaccio, claiming that Jews and Lutherans were subverting religion and that the printing house owned by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Castello was publishing “calumnies against the Bible and the true faith.” The mob was somewhat unimpressive in its resolve; their attempt to enter the upper town was thwarted by a barred gate, and they promptly gave up. Turning back to the Borgu, however, the crowd took the opportunity to attack foreigners and ransacked the house of a Jewish tailor, who was badly beaten. Marquis Luca d’Ornano, the royal luogotenente, ordered the arrest of a number of men who had participated in the riot but subsequently let them go without charge.
Upset by this “lawlessness,” Theodore ordered Captain Achille Murati of the Dragoni Reali to occupy the city and institute martial law. The 31 year old Captain Murati, who had been a macchiare during the French occupation, quartered his squadron in the lower town and began arresting anyone suspected of rioting. Some were fined and released, while a few who were implicated in the assault on the tailor were imprisoned. The instigating priest was also arrested and charged with rioting and sedition. But these harsh tactics backfired; imprisoning a priest for merely voicing his concerns for the faith was seen by many as odious and tyrannical, and the hard hand of “la dragonate” offended local leaders. Marquis d’Ornano was furious that his authority had been countermanded, and although the anziani had no love for rioters they objected to Captain Murati’s suspension of their civic authority.
Theodore withdrew the dragoons and restored power to the anziani, but despite the urging of his cabinet he refused to give clemency to the prisoners. Word soon reached Francesco Salvatico Guidi, the Archbishop of Pisa, who condemned the king’s act.[5] Seeing that public sympathy was against him and fearful of compromising his popularity, Theodore finally relented and ordered the release of the prisoners, but he deeply resented what he saw as the Church’s support for “seditionists.” The king did not care much about Rome’s criticism of his policies, for Corsica’s peasants did not read anti-enlightenment apologetics; most did not read anything at all. Rome’s apparent support for the Borgu riot, however, suggested to Theodore that the Church was actively attempting to turn the people against him.
In other circumstances, cooler heads may have restrained Theodore from further escalation. The king, however, was soon to be bereft of one of his most influential advisors. Queen Eleanora had suffered from a “malady of the stomach” since late 1763, but had taken pains to conceal it from everyone but her handmaidens. In the spring of 1764, however, her condition began to rapidly deteriorate. The king’s doctor, Emanuel Calvo, diagnosed her with a bleeding ulcer of the stomach; it is also possible that she suffered from stomach cancer. In any case, nothing could be done, and on June 26th the first Queen of Corsica died in her bed in the Palace of Bastia. Carlo Rostini claimed in his memoirs that the queen, who rarely spoke of personal and familial matters, told him shortly before her death that Theodore was “the most remarkable man I have ever met,” and that her only regret was that God had not seen fit to bless her with Theodore’s children.
Theodore was clearly deeply affected. Theodore had never resented Eleanora for her failure to bear children, and until the end they remained close. Strong-willed, perceptive, and sensible, she had exerted a stabilizing influence on Theodore and helped moderate his tempers and fancies in much the same way that Chancellor Costa had before his death. She had exerted almost total control over the royal household and budget, and was a shrewd administrator who enjoyed her husband’s complete trust. The queen’s death not only deprived the king of an able partner, but robbed Corsica of one of the few people who possessed great personal influence over the king. Eleanora had never been an openly political figure, but in private her advice was known to carry great weight with Theodore and the king was known to seek her advice on appointments to the ministry. Princess Elisabeth d’Harcourt was a capable successor in the role of royal hostess, but the king saw her as a daughter, not a partner, and she had hardly a shadow of the queen’s political influence.
The relationship between Eleanora and Gaffori had never been warm, but the queen and the prime minister shared a grudging respect. Despite their occasional sparring, Eleanora had recognized the resolve and ability of the “man of stone,” while Gaffori appreciated that he could count on the queen to redirect Theodore when he was being more fanciful than sensible. He immediately regretted her absence, as his relationship with the king had been steadily deteriorating in recent years. Gaffori’s immediate response when he heard the news of her death was concise: “God help us all.” His trepidation proved justified - the next few years would see the king’s excommunication, the collapse of Gaffori’s ministry, a foreign refugee crisis, and the kingdom on the brink of war.
Footnotes
[1] Horace Walpole memorably eulogized him as “loved by papists, esteemed by Protestants, a priest without insolence or interest, a prince without favorites, a pope without nepotism, an author without vanity, a man whom neither intellect nor power could corrupt.”
[2] In a reflection of this practical spirit towards the secular world, Benedict became the first pope to recognize the Hanoverian succession in Britain and accept that the deposition of the Stuarts was an accomplished fact.
[3] Indeed, he actively solicited their settlement. The Corsican consul in Livorno published an advertisement which declared that “industrious men of good character... regardless of sect or conscience” could settle in Corsica and become citizens, and pamphlets on Corsican liberty are known to have circulated in Jewish communities as far away as London and Amsterdam.
[4] Although generally considered a supporter of religious toleration, Hume considered “Theodoran liberty” to be unsound. Toleration, Hume argued, was good in part because it was useful; specifically, it helped to preserve the peace and order of society. As such, religions did not necessarily merit toleration if they were politically corrosive by their nature. To Hume, Catholicism itself was a prime example of a religion which was deserving of suppression, as it invited a foreign power (that is, the pope) to intrude into society and exert an influence which might be contrary to the national interest.
[5] Guidi had been a longtime observer of the Corsican Revolution. He had become Archbishop of Pisa back in 1734 and would still be archbishop after Theodore’s death, attaining one of the longest reigns in the history of the archdiocese. Unlike the Archbishop of Genoa, who was always the Republic’s partisan, Guidi had not been heavily involved in the unrest on the island. He was ever mindful of the fact that although his master in Rome generally favored Genoa, his other master - the Grand Duke of Tuscany, now Holy Roman Emperor - supported Theodore and the rebels. His denunciation of Theodore’s actions after the Borgu Riot was thus somewhat uncharacteristic, and may have been prompted by the new direction the Curia was taking under Clement XIII.
Timeline Notes
[A] IOTL, Rousseau found refuge in the Principality of Neuchatel, which had been in personal union with Prussia since 1707. ITTL, however, Frederick is no longer alive to be Rousseau’s patron and protector.
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Rousseau in Corsica, truly fascinating.
This upcoming conflict with the church does not bode well for the remainder of Theodore's reign. Without his most prestigious and trusted advisors, he is likely to take his almost modern-day-SI-like opinions too far.
This upcoming conflict with the church does not bode well for the remainder of Theodore's reign. Without his most prestigious and trusted advisors, he is likely to take his almost modern-day-SI-like opinions too far.
Rousseau was a notoriously difficult person. He was sensitive, prickly, humorless, pessimistic, and paranoid. Some paranoia was probably excusable - his books had been burned, he was threatened with arrest, and in Switzerland the locals had pelted his house with rocks after the local preacher called him the Antichrist - but Rousseau took it much too far. After being graciously invited to England by Hume, he became convinced that his host was plotting against him and that his letters were being intercepted. He wrote a letter to Hume accusing him of inviting him “apparently to procure a refuge for me, and in reality to dishonor me.” The Hume-Rousseau feud was covered in the international press and caricatured in political cartoons, and drew in many of the philosophes who had axes to grind (especially against Rousseau). This behavior was fairly typical for Rousseau, who alienated pretty much every friend he had over the course of his life. He was hated and feared by many other philosophes who knew that Rousseau, being an extremely popular and influential writer, was capable of causing real harm to their reputations. When Hume had first endeavored to invite Rousseau to England, he had been warned by d’Holbach that “You don’t know your man. I will tell you plainly, you’re warming a viper in your bosom.”
Rousseau was never comfortable with his own celebrity and shied away from audiences. In part this was a consequence of his health problems, particularly a lifelong urinary ailment which caused him to order catheters in bulk (which gave him constant urinary tract infections) and to wear a loose Armenian robe so he could relieve himself more easily. His friends were appalled when he turned down a royal audience with Louis XV, but you might have turned it down too if you thought you might lose bladder control in the king’s presence. Although incredibly popular in his lifetime, Rousseau seems to have been creeped out by his admirers (most notoriously young James Boswell, who visited Rousseau in 1764 and comes off in his own account as the most obnoxious, insufferable fanboy ever to have lived).
Fleeing to Speloncato is probably the best thing for him. It’s rural, quiet, picturesque, and is populated by Corsican peasants who have no idea who he is. They probably give funny looks to the weird Swiss guy in the tasseled oriental robe, but Speloncato is pretty far removed from continental literary controversies and nobody in the village is going to bother a man under Count Quilici’s protection.
Fixed. It should have been [5], and I have added the appropriate footnote.
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John Fredrick Parker
Donor
@Carp Speaking of James Boswell, will he be visiting and writing about the island TTL as well? And might he run into Rousseau while he’s there, and obnoxiously fanboy as he did OTL?
No doubt he would, but since Boswell was born in 1740 I'm not sure whether he qualifies for existence in our tale. Boswell or not, however, we will be getting more foreign "tourists" in Corsica, as its peculiarities make it a possible stop on the Grand Tour for those upper-class travelers of a more unorthodox bent. Boswell had to travel into an unrecognized state in the middle of a rebellion, but travel to Corsica ITTL is considerably more normal and not restricted to foolish young adventurers. (Nevertheless, we will hopefully see our share of foolish young adventurers...)
Carp, the attitude "whoever is born after the PoD will be butterfied away" in my hopinion is crippling for you, I suggest to avoid it; If there is not a direct logical reason to butterfly someone off, then that person should exist; It may do different things (maybe not in this case, as independent Corsica's existence can't have changed things in Britain this deeply) but there is no reason to say that person do not exist.
I would argue given how reproduction works, and in this case how far back the PoD is, there is no legitimate reason that someone that exists in OTL would still exist. At best you would get a names-the-same ATL sibling. We get it, you don't write timelines this way. But could you stop bringing this up every few pages?
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Seeing as Samuel Johnson still exists TTL (or at least he started his strange career prior to the PoD), hopefully at least one of these English adventurers happens to still write a biography of him.
I'm sorry, but it happened quite several pages ago, and in this case I think that chance are that, even agreeing with that theory, the sibling would have the same upbringing and very similar DNA, it could really be just the same with small differences (maybe he does not like a food he loved in our timeline). Upbringing is more important than genetics. Yes, it could be born a girl, have been a stillborn or similar, but that, I'd say it's always up to the writer; I only gave an hopinion, sorry if that incensed you, it was not my intention.
Hey, sorry to come off like that. I wasn't angry. Hard to read voice inflection after all.