Rothschild loans to the Holy See

A second loan occurred during the pontificate of Pope Pius IX in the early 1850s with the same members of the Rothschild family, after the collapse of Giuseppe Mazzini's short-lived revolutionary Roman Republic and the restoration of the Papal States.

The Rothschilds were considered reliable in conservative circles in Europe, because they had worked with the Austrian government to stabilize finances after the Napoleonic Wars.

However, Alessandro Torlonia (acting for the Holy See) held direct negotiations with James Mayer de Rothschild and thrashed out an agreement, signed on 30 November 1831.

[2] His Naples-based brother, Carl Mayer von Rothschild, geographically closer to Rome, went to meet with Pope Gregory XVI in January 1832.

A second loan occurred during the Pontificate of Pope Pius IX ("Pio Nono") in the early 1850s with the same members of the Rothschild family after the collapse of Giuseppe Mazzini's short-lived revolutionary Roman Republic and the restoration of the Papal States.

Reports of the transaction led to stinging criticisms of Pope Gregory XVI in the Christian (in particular, Catholic) world, almost all of which circulated around the Jewishness of the Rothschilds.

While Belli found the Rothschilds highly objectionable, for him the Pope was even worse as a weak man who had "sold both Rome and the State" and was thus no longer worthy of wearing the Papal robes.

[6] Although the Hungarian-Jewish writer Ignatius Balla in his 1913 book The Romance of the Rothschilds later attributed Cardinal Tosti's motivation to "no doubt sectarian reasons,"[7] the six rival banks were themselves mostly Protestant or Swiss, but also some Jewish.

Although this counter-attack damaged the Rothschilds rivals, when Cardinal Tosti floated the idea of Roman bonds, the Banque André & Cottier and others were keen to advance on it and sent the Livorno merchant Vincent Nolte to confirm their interest.

[12] The six Parisian firms at first considered trying to offer such conditions that, if the Rothschilds tried to match it then it would damage their own interests; however, in the end, the two sides reconciled and went in on the new loan terms together.