The Corsican Affair

In August 1662 an altercation outside Palazzo Farnese, the French ambassador’s residency in Rome, led to several injuries and deaths. The quarrel had been between members of the ambassador’s entourage and the Corsican guard garrisoned in the city and was symptomatic of broader tensions concerning diplomatic privileges in 17th-century Rome. In the aftermath France occupied the papal enclave of Avignon as punishment and the pope was forced to send a cardinal legate to Paris to apologise to Louis XIV.

In the 1660s the French king and his ambassadors maintained an intimidating attitude towards Rome and the Corsican incident led to the Treaty of Pisa in 1664, which humiliated the papacy and guaranteed the prerogatives of French ambassadors in Rome. This international incident over an apparent breach of diplomatic immunity evolved to become one of the most heated issues in a long-standing cold war between the French king and the popes over the régale: the extension of Louis’ regal authority over the French Catholic Church at the expense of papal influence. At the heart of the matter was the relationship between spiritual and temporal monarchy and the limitations of papal jurisdiction.

Under the terms of diplomatic privileges granted to diplomats and their residences, known as the franchises, diplomats, members of the diplomatic entourage or others affiliated to the embassy were exempt from the control of the Roman authorities. Neither the papal government, nor the sbirri – the papal police force – were able to exert any legal power within the boundaries of the embassy. Over the course of several decades these boundaries expanded beyond the initial diplomatic residences to include side streets and surrounding blocks, within which the franchises also extended. These ‘quarters’ became the subject of growing tensions as the great powers pursued an ongoing rivalry over which had the most control of Roman territory, to the increasing concern of the popes.

Following the Corsican affair, the issue of diplomatic immunity lay more or less moribund until the accession of Pope Innocent XI in 1676. The new pope was deeply concerned that the extension of diplomatic quarters was threatening the city’s stability and the authorities’ ability to maintain order and exact justice. The extension of the franchise certainly facilitated corruption; it was not unknown for individuals to pay to be recognised as members of a diplomatic suite so they would be immune from prosecution. Others did deals to avoid import duties by having goods brought into Rome under an ambassador’s name, with his duty-free privileges attached. Criminals often fled into diplomatic quarters to escape arrest and prosecution.

In 1677 Pope Innocent was gratified when the King of Spain agreed to give up the Spanish quarters on the condition that the other powers would follow suit. Over the next years many of them did so, although not always willingly. The pope’s usual tactic was to refuse to recognise a new ambassador unless claims to the quarters were relinquished. However France refused to oblige and continued to insist that the franchises were upheld around Palazzo Farnese. The French argued that ‘the Pope, eager to signalise his Popedom by some extraordinary Innovation, conceived the Design of destroying the Franchises of the Ambassadours of Crowned Heads.’

In 1684, when a criminal fleeing the Roman authorities escaped to the French quarter, the sbirri in pursuit were detained by the French ambassador. This was a terrible insult to the Roman authorities and Innocent became increasingly hostile as negotiations continued between the curia and the French court over the limits of the franchises. Innocent refused to give in and rejected French proposals allowing for a more restricted French quarter without conceding the principles of diplomatic privilege.

By 1687 the French ambassador knew that the Roman authorities would take action; he vacated the Palazzo and soon after the French quarter was occupied. A few weeks later, in May 1687, Innocent formally issued a bull removing diplomatic immunity from the quarters, a position which all the great powers, except France, now accepted. The arrival of the Marquis de Lavardin, the new French ambassador, with an armed entourage, marked an aggressive rejection of Innocent’s policy. Lavardin took up residence in the Palazzo Farnese, flying the French flag and refusing to abandon its diplomatic privileges. He essentially established the French quarter as a militarised colony within Rome, but he sought to restore order to the district. He expelled over 100 criminals living within its boundaries and had entrance ways policed to prevent the quarter’s immunities being abused. In March 1688, following his excommunication and an interdict placed on the French church of St Louis, Lavardin was recalled. He had to remove his armed guard, having spent a great deal of his own money defending and reforming the quarter. Innocent XI’s death in August 1689 gave Louis the opportunity to draw a line under the dispute without losing face. He had initially insisted that the new pope, Alexander VIII, should accept the immunities of the quarter as well as other points of conflict, but when Alexander refused, Louis acquiesced on the franchises, hoping this would give him a better bargaining position on the rest. In the next pontificate, pressures of war, geopolitics and diplomacy eventually forced Louis to abandon most of the other claims of the régale, too.

The affair of the franchises emphasised that Rome remained the diplomatic centre of Europe and demonstrated how the popes were committed to preserving their continued relevance in post-Reformation Europe. Louis XIV’s insistence that the exercise of diplomatic privilege within the quarter was a temporal, not a spiritual matter, was one way in which Catholic monarchs sought to justify resistance to papal authority. But many were equally pleased to align themselves with papal interests. Innocent XI reportedly felt that Spain’s ‘renouncement of the quarter gave greater pleasure than the destruction of 30,000 Turks’: a sentiment that suggests the papacy remained intent not just on reclaiming the city of Rome and the papal states from external influence, but were also gratified by the support of the Catholic powers and buoyed by the influence they exerted in Europe and beyond.

E.L. Devlin is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge.