This essay relates the diplomatic strategies of Cardinal Consalvi - sent to the Congress of Vienna as papal representative - and the more general evolution that involved the whole Church since the late eighteenth century. The author shows how the balance of power between the Church hierarchy and the institutional organization of the Holy See itself were subject, in those years, to a profound reshaping, not always in line with the renewed needs for a "romantic" spirituality that pervaded European society. This "mismatch" characterized the relationship between the top and the base of Catholicism throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, reaching its peak during the uprising of 1848.
Keywords: State of the Church, Church hierarchy, Vienna Congress, spirituality, Catholicism.