Pope Benedict XIV

“ Clement XIII was the ardent defender of the Society during the ten stormy years of his pontificate; and finally Clement XIV yielded to the enemy and put his name to the Brief which legislated the Order out of existence.
[437] Perhaps there never was a Pope who enjoyed such universal popularity as the brilliant Benedict XIV. His attractive personality, his great ability as a writer, his readiness to go to all lengths in the way of concession, elicited praise even from heretics, Turks and unbelievers. ”

“ Benedict XIV. (Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini) , pope from 1740 to 1758, was born at Bologna on the 31st of March 1675. At the age of thirteen he entered the Collegium Clementinum at Rome. He served the Curia in many and important capacities, yet devoted his leisure time to theological and canonistic study. Benedict XIII. made him archbishop of Theodosia in partibus, then of Ancona (1727) , and the next year created him cardinal priest. In 1731 Clement XII. translated him to his native city of Bologna, where as archbishop he was both efficient and popular. ”

“ Under his pontificate "the Romans," as Voltaire says, "enjoyed profound peace, and shared all the charms and glory which talent sheds on society." Benedict XIV. cultivated letters, composed poems, and patronized science. The infidel himself just mentioned paid him homage, and professed profound veneration for him, when sending him a copy of his "Mahomet." [Footnote 168] Every pope in his turn has been a Maecenas. Not one in the august line has lost sight of the interests of society and the prerogatives of mind. The useful and the beautiful were always present to their thoughts ”

“ He next complained to Benedict XIV. that the trading operations of the Society hampered the commercial prosperity of the nation, and asked for remedial measures. The pope, who knew the situation, committed a visitation of the Society to Cardinal Saldanha, an intimate friend of Pombal, who issued a severe decree against the Jesuits and ordered the confiscation of all their merchandise. But at this juncture Benedict XIV., the most learned and able pope of the period, was succeeded by a pope strongly in favour of the Jesuits, Clement XIII. Pombal, finding no help from Rome, adopted other means. ”

“ Cardinal Saldanha was appointed "visitor and reformer of the society," with full power to reform whatsoever abuses should be found to exist, and if, after investigation, "any grave matters" were discovered, he was required to report them to the pope, who would then decide what subsequent steps were to be taken. [106] The proceedings up to that point were therefore judiciously conducted. The death of Benedict XIV, however, within about a month after the date of this brief, passed it over to Clement XIII, his immediate successor. ”

“ Art and science owe him a real debt. He began to arrange and exhibit in a museum the long since accumulated antique sculptures and the priceless stone tablets bearing more than 5000 heathen and Christian inscriptions. Like Benedict XIV who had befriended him and had made a place for him in the Papal administra- tion, he sought to foster peace with the States. The custom of read- ing the belligerent bull Ccena Domini once a year was abandoned* But now the Courts demanded no less than the dissolution of the Society of Jesus as a whole by the Pope. ”

“ He canonised Vincent de Paul, John Francis Regis, and Juliana Falconieri.
The conclave that followed lasted six months before any of the candidates could secure the required majority. At last Cardinal Lambertini was elected and proclaimed under the title of Benedict XIV. [5] (1740-58) . In many particulars, but more especially as a scholar and a writer, he may be regarded as one of the greatest Popes of modern times. He was born in 1675, was educated at Rome and Bologna, and even as a very young man he was looked upon as a leading authority on canon law and theology. ”

“ They conducted great commercial enterprises in North and South America, and struggled bitterly against the bishops in England. France accused them of intensifying the domestic strife of its Church, and Spain and Portugal brought grave charges against them. But Benedict XIV. seems to have dreaded the overweening and doomed Society. Even his private letters are singularly free from direct allusions to them, and more than one Jesuit scholar was employed by him on tasks of importance. ”

“ In politics the new age was characterized by the decay of Spain and "the Empire," and the rise of France, and the increased power of France led to a revival of the old Gallic defiance, within orthodox limits, of the Papacy, culminating in the famous "Declaration of the Gallican Clergy" (1682) , and to the powerful lay movements which gathered round Pascal and the Jansenists or Voltaire and the philosophers. Benedict XIV. mounted the Papal throne in the height of these developments, and his attitude of [Pg 353] compromise makes him one of the most singular and interesting Popes of the new era. ”

“ Benedict himself was dependent upon the Emperor for help against Byzantines, Saracens and factions in Rome itself. He could not be called a Pope of spiritual influence, but he was an astute politician, and under him the Papacy not only exercised without question its official power but also moved a little in the direction of church reform. As a ruler with activity and energy in days of darkness and degradation, he regained for the Papacy something of the old international position. ”

“ Yet for all this it were to be wish’d, for the sake of the Ecclesiastical State, that he had been chose Pope in the place of Benedict XIII. But ’tis the Unhappiness of this Country, that its Princes are commonly more harass’d with their bodily Infirmities, than with the Cares of Government: ’Tis pity that the Pope is so old; for he has the very Qualities that constitute a great Prince. Notwithstanding his great Age, he has had the good Luck to make ten Cardinals, tho’ he has not been sixteen Months in the Pontificate ”

“ Benedict now ruled for some time in Rome, while Sylvester III found safety either within some fortified monument in the city or in some Sabine fortress, and continued to call himself pope. A beneficent darkness veils the horrors of this year. Hated by the Romans, insecure on his throne, in constant terror of the renewal of the revolution, Benedict eventually found himself obliged to abdicate. The abbot Bartholomew of Grotta Ferrata urged him to the step, but he unblushingly sold the papacy for money like a piece of merchandise. ”

“ The pontificate of Alexander VII was shadowed by continual difficulties with the young and ill-advised Louis XIV of France, whose representatives were a constant source of annoyance to the Pope. The French prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin, had not forgiven the legate who resolutely opposed him at the conferences of Münster and Osnabrück, or the papal secretary of state who stood in the way of his anti-Roman policy. ”

“ On the ground of this extremely dubious declaration, designed to compensate for the absence of any authentic and firm foundation in ecclesiastical law, the Pisan assembly on the 5th of June announced the deposition of Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII.,Alexander V., 1409–1410. as manifest heretics and partisans of the schism. The next step was to elect a new pope ”

“ He died a month later, unconscious of the great revolution which the Catholic Powers were preparing to force on the Papacy.
Of the isolated ecclesiastical acts of Benedict it is impossible to give here even a summary. No Pope since the great Pontiffs of the early Middle Ages had enriched his Church with so much (from the Papal point of view) sound legislation: none had had so scientific a command of ecclesiastical affairs or united with it so indefatigable an industry. ”

“ Just as a young man was about to place the vane in position he was seized with sudden giddiness, and falling to the ground was dashed to pieces. "His body," so a somewhat quaint local version of the story has it, "was gathered together by the horrified onlookers," and his skull—which can still be seen—was placed at the foot of the crucifix on the high altar as an offering. There is a record in the church of the fact that the Emperor erected the building, and that Pope Benedict VIII., who was a nominee of his, made the very considerable journey from Rome to consecrate it. ”

“ Rome becomes a vast theatre of disorder, on which the most powerful families in Italy contend for ascendancy—the Counts of Tuscany usually proving victorious. In 1033, this house dares to place upon the pontifical throne, under the name of Benedict the Ninth, a young boy brought up in debauchery. This child of twelve, when pope, continues his ineffable turpitude. [18] A faction elects Sylvester in his stead, and at length Pope Benedict, with a [24] conscience loaded with adultery, and a hand dyed with the blood of murders, [19] sells the popedom to an ecclesiastic of Rome. ”

“ On the 29th of June 1408 he and seven of his colleagues broke away from Gregory XII., and together with six cardinals of the obedience of Avignon, who had in like manner separated from Benedict XIII., they agreed to aim at the assembling of a general council, setting aside the two rival pontiffs, an expedient which they considered would put an end to the great schism of the Western Church, but which resulted in the election of yet a third pope. ”

“ At the next election (1724) he was himself proposed for the papal chair, and secured ten votes at the Conclave which elected Benedict XIII. Benedict’s successor, Clement XII. (elected 1730) , named him legate of Ravenna, in which capacity he incurred the pope’s displeasure by the strong and unwarrantable measures he adopted to reduce the little republic of San Marino to subjection to Rome. ”

“ But the degradation of the papal chair was not yet complete, and Philip was far from satisfied. Merely to have harassed to death an old man of eighty-six was not sufficient for a monarch who wanted a servant in the Pope more than a victim. To try his power over Benedict the Eleventh, the successor of Boniface, he began a process in the Roman court against the memory of his late antagonist. ”

“ Now when Benedict, the former pope, learned of the death of Clement (for he was staying at Tusculum) , he succeeded in winning over a part of the Roman people by bribery and again usurped the pontificate. But when the ambassadors of the Romans came to the king, he received them in his palace with great honor and gave them many gifts; then, calling together a great assembly of bishops, abbots, counts, margraves, and other princes, according to the decrees of the holy fathers, he chose a pope who should be pleasing to God and the whole people. ”

“ V. Hus Again Rector. Since 1378, there were two sets of rival popes most lustily pelting one another with papal curses. The Council of Pisa in 1409 deposed popes Benedict XIII and Gregory XII as heretics and schismatics and then elected Alexander V, who died on May 11, 1410, most probably poisoned by "Diavolo Cardinale" Cossa, who then became Pope John XXIII. Now there were three popes and a three-cornered fight. To make the good old times still more interesting, three rivals struggled for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. ”

“ The present church was built by the anti-pope Benedict XIII., who at the period of the schism had a large following among the clergy of France. He thought to establish himself and the Papacy in Carpentras, having previously been kept a prisoner at Avignon by the factions who refused to acknowledge his papal authority. ”

“ The number of days on which men rested from work had become a scandal, and many complaints had reached the Holy See. Benedict's indult was gradually adopted by entire nations.
Of far greater interest is Benedict's attitude toward what we may call foreign affairs, and in this we discover again the more genial side of his character. Those who had known the different aspects of the Pope's personality—the punctilious learning of the ecclesiastic and the bonhomie of the man—must have wondered how he would confront the hereditary problems of the Papacy. ”

“ Benedict XI. (Niccolo Boccasini) , pope from 1303 to 1304, the son of a notary, was born in 1240 at Treviso. Entering the Dominican order in 1254, he became lector, prior of the convent, provincial of his order in Lombardy, and in 1296 its general. In 1298 he was created cardinal priest of Santa Sabina, and in 1300 cardinal bishop of Ostia and Velletri. In 1302 he was papal legate in Hungary. On the 22nd of October 1303 he was unanimously elected pope. He did much to conciliate the enemies made by his predecessor Boniface VIII., notably France, the Colonnas and King Frederick II. of Sicily ”

“ Benedict governed Rome quietly for nearly nine years, a somewhat rare thing in those days.
Benedict VIII., pope from 1012 to 1024, was called originally Theophylactus. He was a member of the family of the count of Tusculum, and was opposed by an anti-pope, Gregory, but defeated him with the aid of King Henry II. of Saxony, whom he crowned emperor in 1014. In his pontificate the Saracens began to attack the southern coasts of Europe, and effected a settlement in Sardinia. The Normans also then began to settle in Italy. ”

“ Benedict's immediate predecessor, Clement XII., an elderly disciplinarian whose strength was not equal to his pretensions, had left the internal and foreign affairs of the Quirinal—the Popes now dwelt chiefly in that palace—in a condition of strain and disorder, nor was Benedict's Secretary of State, Cardinal Valenti, the man to relieve the Pope of the work of reform. Choiseul, who was then the French representative at Rome, describes Valenti as very able but very lazy: a man of great charm, especially to ladies, and easy morals. ”