Pope Pius VIII

Francesco Saverio Castiglioni, a respected canonist, had earlier suffered imprisonment under Napoleon for refusing an oath of allegiance. His pontificate lasted barely twenty months. In his 1829 encyclical Traditi humilitati he warned against religious indifferentism, secret societies, and threats to Christian marriage. He cautiously accepted the new French monarchy after the July Revolution of 1830 and welcomed Catholic Emancipation in Britain and Ireland. More moderate than Leo XII, he eased some of his predecessor's harsher measures. Frail and short-lived, he died in late 1830 as revolutionary unrest spread across Europe, leaving little time to shape a distinctive legacy.