Leonardo Rossi, “« Pie IX est mort, mais le Pape ne meurt jamais ». Le corps contesté du dernier pape-roi, entre discours martyriel et espoirs de triomphe séculier (fin du XIXe siècle)”, in Pierre-Marie Delpu (ed.), Le martyre politique en Europe du Sud (XIXe–XXIe siècle). Figures, mutations, usages, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2025, pp. 125–141

This chapter examines the contested body of Pius IX, the last pope-king, as a crucial site of political and religious conflict in late nineteenth-century Italy. Focusing on the rhetoric of martyrdom that surrounded the pontiff before and after his death in 1878, it shows how Catholic intransigent discourse transformed Pius IX into a suffering yet triumphant figure, a “prisoner of the Vatican” and a martyr of modernity. At the same time, liberal and anticlerical actors rejected this sacralised image, turning the pope’s corpse into a polemical symbol of the struggle between Church and State after Italian unification. By analysing devotional practices, Catholic press narratives, funerary rituals and the contested translation of his remains, the chapter argues that martyrdom in the Risorgimento was not an exclusively religious category, but a shared and disputed political language through which competing communities negotiated authority, memory and legitimacy.