Pius VI
Giovanni Angelo Braschi · 1775 – 1799
Dragged from Rome by Napoleon's troops and died a prisoner in France, the longest-reigning pope of the eighteenth century.
Giovanni Braschi became pope in 1775 and reigned for over twenty-four years, making his the longest pontificate of the 1700s. He condemned the French Revolution's Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which tried to make the French Church a department of the state. In 1798, French troops invaded Rome and took the eighty-one-year-old pope prisoner. He was dragged across the Alps and died in captivity at Valence, France, in August 1799. Many thought the papacy had died with him.
Why He Matters
Pius VI died a prisoner, and his enemies thought they had killed the papacy itself. They were wrong. His successor was elected within months, and the institution that Napoleon tried to destroy outlasted him by centuries.