Gregory XVI, whose name was Alberto Cappellari, was born in Belluno on the 18th of September 1765 and died in Rome on the 1st of June 1846. After becoming a Camaldolese monk (1783), he was convinced of the superiority and infallibility of the papacy (“Triumph of the Holy See”, 1799); he ascended the papal throne on the 2nd of February 1831. He promoted the reform of foreign missions favoring the training of a native clergy. He distinguished himself for his conservative and anti-liberal policy that caused several riots in the Pontifical State. In order to suffocate them he was forced to turn to the help from the Austrian military in order to suppress the insurrections from Romagna (in this circumstance, the French occupied Ancona and this double foreign protection lasted until 1838). Gregory XVI entrusted the repression against the Liberals to the so-called Centurions: an irregular body of volunteers with all the characteristics of a faction army, ready for every attack and abuse. Under the rule of Gregory XVI (1831-1846), the Pontifical State was in a situation worse than the one in the other States on the Peninsula.
The writer Massimo D’Azeglio, in his “RIFLESSIONI SUGLI ULTIMI CASI DI ROMAGNA”, states that the insurrection that broke out in Rimini in 1845 was caused by the exasperation of the people oppressed by the Pontifical Government that imposed very high taxes, limited the importation and the exportation of goods, diminished work and production, was a cause of smuggling and was a reason welcoming corruption and immorality.

Pope Gregory XVI

As far as the justice system is concerned, D’Azeglio states that in the Pontifical State there was no protection in the choice of counsel for the defence, who was given by the Court and chosen among those people who were devoted to it; the extraordinary Committees were not bound to any legal order of procedure and had unlimited authority for the sentences. Even the technological progress was refused by Gregory XVI who considered railroads to be a satanic work (the whole Europe laughed at him). The Pope demonstrated to be very uncompromising towards any form of modern thinking and towards any acceptance of it. He condemned the liberal Catholicism of Huges Félicité de Lamennais (a French clerical, writer and politician) by means of the encyclical MIRARI VOS (1832).

This politician, after a period in which he was an ardent and traditional religious supporter, faced a development that became concrete in 1829 with his written piece “Progressi della rivoluzione e della guerra contro la Chiesa” in which he detailed a program of independence separating the Church from the State. After the explosion of the Paris revolution of 1830 he became the head of the French liberal Catholicism from the columns of the newspaper “L’Avenir” founded by him and heavily condemned by Gregory XVI. In 1834 he finally broke off from the Church and became advocate of a new romantic-messianic religious ideal and theories of social content. In the role of deputy in 1848-49, he defended the roman Republic. As far as the town of Tivoli is concerned, that of course was part of the Pontifical State, it was just Gregory XVI to tie his name to a daring work that made the old Tibur protected from any future flood, making it even more under the control of the Pontifical authority.

The tremendous inundation of November 1826 had caused a very serious disaster: once again the river had overflowed its banks and had inundated many areas of the town after having destroyed the dam that had just been erected to protect it. On this occasion, the flood waters had brought down a good part of the town, also S Lucia’s church; such a tragedy was in part comparable with the much older one that had caused the destruction of a temple dated back to the late-republican age and located inside the acropolis of Tivoli (in the Vatican Museums they have saved the earthenware little statues that decorated the frieze of the temple). After the inundation of 1826, the dam had been restored by the then Pope Lion XII, as well as he could, but his successor Pio the VIII had been the one who tried to resolve the problem in a decisive way entrusting Clemente Folchi with the works. This architect conceived the idea of building the Mount Catillo Tunnel, by making a double tunnel to increase the flow of the diverted water; his project was approved by the new Pope Gregory XVI. After only one year of work, on the 7th of September 1835, the Gregorian underground passages were finished; the works not only diverted the river but were aimed also to create two squares: “Piazza Rivarola”, next to the medieval citadel, and “Piazza Massimo”; these two were successively united thanks to the construction of the Gregorian Bridge (destroyed during the Second World War and then reconstructed in the post-war period).

Memorial plaque of Pope Gregory XVI