(LORENZO–or GIOVANNI VINCENZO
ANTONIO–GANGANELLI).
Born at Sant’ Arcangelo, near Rimini, 31 October, 1765; died at Rome, 22
September, 1774.–At the death of Clement XIII the Church was in dire distress.
Gallicanism and Jansenism, Febronianism and Rationalism were up in rebellion
against the authority of the Roman pontiff; the rulers of France, Spain, Naples,
Portugal, Parma were on the side of the sectarians who flattered their dynastic
prejudices and, at least in appearance, worked for the strengthening of the
temporal power against the spiritual. The new pope would have to face a
coalition of moral and political forces which Clement XIII had indeed manfully
resisted, but failed to put down, or even materially to check. The great
question between Rome and the Bourbon princes was the suppression of the Society
of Jesus. In France, Spain, and Portugal the suppression had taken place de
facto; the accession of a new pope was made the occasion for insisting on
the abolition of the order root and branch, de facto and de jure,
in Europe and all over the world.
The conclave assembled 15 February, 1769. Rarely, if ever, has a conclave
been the victim of such overweening interference, base intrigues, and
unwarranted pressure. The ambassadors of France (d’Aubeterre) and Spain (Azpuru)
and the Cardinals de Bernis (France) and Orsini (Naples) led the campaign. The
Sacred college, consisting of forty-seven cardinals, was divided into Court
cardinals and Zelanti. The latter, favourable to the Jesuits and opposed
to the encroaching secular, were in a majority. "It is easy to foresee the
difficulties of our negotiations on a stage where more than three-fourths of the
actors are against us." Thus wrote Bernis to Choiseul, the minister of
Louis XV. The immediate object of the intriguers was to gain over a sufficient
number of Zelanti. D’Aubeterre, inspired by Azpuru, urged Bernis to insist
that the election of the future pope be made to depend on his written engagement
to suppress the Jesuits. The cardinal, however, refused. In a memorandum to
Choiseul, dated 12 April, 1769, he says: "To require from the future pope a
promise made in writing or before witnesses, to destroy the Jesuits, would be a
flagrant violation of the canon law and therefore a blot on the honour of the
crowns." The King of Spain (Charles III) was willing to bear the
responsibility. D’Aubeterre opined that simony and canon law had no standing
against reason, which claimed the abolition of the Society for the peace of the
world. Threats were now resorted to; Bernis hinted at a blockade of Rome and
popular insurrections to overcome the resistance of the Zelanti. France and
Spain, in virtue of their right of veto, excluded twenty-three of the
forty-seven cardinals; nine or ten more, on account of their age or for some
other reason, were not papabili; only four or five remained eligible.
Well might the Sacred College, as Bernis feared it would, protest against
violence and separate on the plea of not being free to elect a suitable
candidate. But d’Aubeterre was relentless. He wished to intimidate the
cardinals. "A pope elected against the wishes of the Courts", he
wrote, "will not be acknowledged"; and again, "I think that a
pope of that [philosophical] temper, that is without scruples, holding fast to
no opinion and consulting only his own interests, might be acceptable to the
Courts". The ambassadors threatened to leave Rome unless the conclave
surrendered to their dictation. The arrival of the two Spanish cardinals, Solis
and La Cerda, added new strength to the Court party. Solis insisted on a written
promise to suppress the Jesuits being given by the future pope, but Bernis was
not to be gained over to such a breach of the law. Solis, therefore, supported
in the conclave by Cardinal Malvazzi and outside by the ambassadors of France
and Spain, took the matter into his own hands. He began by sounding Cardinal
Ganganelli as to his willingness to give the promise required by the Bourbon
princes as an indispensable condition for election.–Why Ganganelli? This
cardinal was the only friar in the Sacred College. Of humble birth (his father
had been a surgeon at Sant' Arcangelo), he had received his education from the
Jesuits of Rimini and the Piarists of Urbino, and, in 1724, at the age of
nineteen, had entered the Order of Friars Minor of St. Francis and changed his
baptismal name (Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio) for that of Lorenzo. His talents and
his virtues had raised him to the dignity of definitor generalis of his
order (1741); Benedict XIV made him Consultor of the Holy Office, and Clement
XIII gave him the cardinal's hat (1759), at the instance, it is said, of Father
Ricci, the General of the Jesuits. During the conclave he endeavoured to please
both the Zelanti and the Court party without committing himself to either. At
any rate he signed a paper which satisfied Solis. Crétineau-Joly, the historian
of the Jesuits, gives its text; the future pope declared "that he
recognized in the sovereign pontiff the right to extinguish, with good
conscience, the Company of Jesus, provided he observed the canon law; and that
it was desirable that the pope should do everything in his power to satisfy the
wishes of the Crowns". The original paper is, however, nowhere to be found,
but its existence seems established by subsequent events, and also by the
testimony of Bernis in letters to Choiseul (28 July, and 20 November, 1769).
Ganganelli had thus secured the votes of the Court cardinals; the Zelanti looked
upon him as indifferent or even favourable to the Jesuits; d’Aubeterre had
always been in his favour as being "a wise and moderate theologian";
and Choiseul had marked him as "very good" on the list of papabili.
Bernis, anxious to have his share in the victory of the sovereigns, urged the
election. On 18 May, 1769, Ganganelli was elected by forty-six votes out of
forty-seven, the forty-seventh being his own which he had given to Cardinal
Rezzonico, a nephew of Clement XIII. He took the name of Clement XIV.
The new pope's first Encyclical clearly defined his policy: to keep the peace
with Catholic princes in order to secure their support in the war against
irreligion. His predecessor had left him a legacy of broils with nearly every
Catholic power in Europe. Clement hastened to settle as many as he could by
concessions and conciliatory measures. Without revoking the constitution of
Clement XIII against he young Duke of Parma's inroads on the rights of the
Church, he refrained from urging its execution, and graciously granted him a
dispensation to marry his cousin, the Archduchess Amelia, daughter of Maria
Theresa of Austria. The King of Spain, soothed by these concessions, withdrew
the uncanonical edict which, a year before, he had issued as a counterblast to
the pope's proceedings against the infant Duke of Parma, the king's nephew; he
also re-established the nuncio's tribunal and condemned some writings against
Rome. Portugal had been severed from Rome since 1760; Clement XIV began his
attempt at reconciliation by elevating to the Sacred College Paulo de Carvalho,
brother of the famous minister Pombal; active negotiations terminated in the
revocation, by King Joseph I, of the ordinances of 1760, the origin and cause of
the rupture between Portugal and the Holy See. A grievance common to Catholic
princes was the yearly publication, on Holy Thursday, of the censures reserved
to the pope; Clement abolished this custom in the first Lent of his pontificate.
But there remained the ominous question of the Jesuits. The Bourbon princes,
though thankful for smaller concessions, would not rest till they had obtained
the great object of their machinations, the total suppression of the Society.
Although persecuted in France, Spain, Sicily, and Portugal, the Jesuits had
still many powerful protectors: the rulers, as well as the public conscience,
protected them and their numerous establishments in the ecclesiastical
electorates of Germany, in the Palatinate, Bavaria, Silesia, Poland,
Switzerland, and the many countries subject to the sceptre of Maria Theresa, not
to mention the States of the Church and the foreign missions. The Bourbon
princes were moved in their persecution by the spirit of the times, represented
in Latin countries by French irreligious philosophism, by Jansenism, Gallicanism,
and Erastianism; probably also by the natural desire to receive the papal
sanction for their unjust proceedings against the order, for which they stood
accused at the bar of the Catholic conscience. The victim of a man's injustice
often becomes the object of his hatred; thus only the conduct of Charles III, of
Pombal, Tanucci, Aranda, Moniño can be accounted for.
An ever-recurring and almost solitary grievance against the Society was that
the Fathers disturbed the peace wherever they were firmly established. The
accusation is not unfounded: the Jesuits did indeed disturb the peace of the
enemies of the Church, for, in the words of d’Alembert to Frederick II, they
were "the grenadiers of the pope's guard". Cardinal de Bernis, now
French ambassador in Rome, was instructed by Choiseul to follow the lead of
Spain in the renewed campaign against the Jesuits. On the 22nd of July, 1769, he
presented to the pope a memorandum in the name of the three ministers of the
Bourbon kings, "The three monarchs", it ran, "still believe the
destruction of the Jesuits to be useful and necessary; they have already made
their request to Your Holiness, and they renew it this day." Clement
answered that "he had his conscience and honour to consult"; he asked
for a delay. On 30 September he made some vague promises to Louis XV, who was
less eager in the fray than Charles III. This latter, bent on the immediate
suppression of the order, obtained from Clement XIV, under the strong pressure
of Azpuru, the written promise "to submit to His Majesty a scheme for the
absolute extinction of the Society" (30 November, 1769). To prove his
sincerity the pope now commenced open hostilities against the Jesuits. He
refused to see their general, Father Ricci, and gradually removed from his
entourage their best friends; his only confidants were two friars of his own
order, Buontempo and Francesco; no princes or cardinals surrounded his throne.
The Roman people, dissatisfied with this state of things and reduced to
starvation by maladministration, openly showed their discontent, but Clement,
bound by his promises and caught in the meshes of Bourbon diplomacy, was unable
to retrace his steps. The college and seminary of Frascati were taken from the
Jesuits and handed over to the bishop of the town, the Cardinal of York. Their
Lenten catechisms were prohibited for 1770. A congregation of cardinals hostile
to the order visited the Roman College and had the Fathers expelled; the
novitiate and the German College were also attacked. The German College won its
cause, but the sentence was never executed. The novices and students were sent
back to their families. A similar system of persecution was extended to Bologna,
Ravenna, Ferrara, Modena, Macerata. Nowhere did the Jesuits offer any
resistance; they knew that their efforts were futile. Father Garnier wrote:
"You ask me why the Jesuits offer no defence: they can do nothing here. All
approaches, direct and indirect, are completely closed, walled up with double
walls. Not the most insignificant memorandum can find its way in. There is no
one who would undertake to hand it in" (19th Jan., 1773).
On 4 July, 1772, appeared on the scene a new Spanish ambassador, Joseph Moniño,
Count of Florida Blanca. At once he made an onslaught on the perplexed pope. He
openly threatened him with a schism in Spain and probably in the other Bourbon
states, such as had existed in Portugal from 1760 to 1770. On the other hand, he
promised the restitution of Avignon and Benvento, still held by France and
Naples. Whilst Clement's anger was roused by this latter simoniacal proposal,
his good, but feeble, heart could not overcome the fear of a widespread schism.
Moniño had conquered. He now ransacked the archives of Rome and Spain to supply
Clement with facts justifying the promised suppression. Moniño must be held
responsible for the matter of the Brief "Dominus ac Redemptor", i. e.
for its facts and provisions; the pope contributed little more to it than the
form of his supreme authority. Meanwhile Clement continued to harass the Jesuits
of his own dominions, perhaps with a view to preparing the Catholic world for
the Brief of suppression, or perhaps hoping by his severity to soothe the anger
of Charles III and to stave off the abolition of the whole order. Until the end
of 1772 he still found some support against the Bourbons in King Charles
Emmanuel of Sardinia and in the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. But Charles
Emmanuel died, and Maria Theresa, giving way to the importunate prayers of her
son Joseph II and her daughter the Queen of Naples, ceased to plead for the
maintenance of the Society. Thus left to himself, or rather to the will of
Charles III and the wiles of Moniño, Clement began, in November, 1772, the
composition of the Brief of abolition, which took him seven months to finish. It
was signed 8 June, 1773; at the same time a congregation of cardinals was
appointed to administer the property of the suppressed order. On 21 July the
bells of the Gesù rang the opening of the annual novena preceding the feast of
St. Ignatius; the pope, hearing them, remarked: "They are not ringing for
the saints but for the dead". The Brief of suppression, signed on 8 June,
bears the date 21 July, 1773. It was made known at the Gesù to the general
(Father Ricci) and his assistants on the evening of 16 August; the following day
they were taken first to the English College, then to Castel Sant’ Angelo,
where their long trial was commenced. Ricci never saw the end of it. He died in
prison, to his last moment protesting his innocence and that of his order. His
companions were set free under Pius VI, their judges having found them "not
guilty".
The Brief, "Dominus ac Redemptor" opens with the statement that it
is the pope's office to secure in the world the unity of mind in the bonds of
peace. He must therefore be prepared, for the sake of charity, to uproot and
destroy the things most dear to him, whatever pains and bitterness their loss
may entail. Often the popes, his predecessors, have made use of their supreme
authority for reforming, and even dissolving, religious orders which had become
harmful and disturbed the peace of the nations rather than promoted it. Numerous
examples are quoted, then the Brief continues: "Our predecessors, in virtue
of the plenitude of power which is theirs as Vicars of Christ, have suppressed
such orders without allowing them to state their claims or to refute the grave
accusations brought against them, or to impugn the motives of the pope."
Clement has now to deal with a similar case, that of the Society of Jesus.
Having enumerated the principal favours granted it by former popes, he remarks
that "the very tenor and terms of the said Apostolic constitutions show
that the Society from its earliest days bore the germs of dissensions and
jealousies which tore its own members asunder, led them to rise against other
religious orders, against the secular clergy and the universities, nay even
against the sovereigns who had received them in their states". Then follows
a list of the quarrels in which the Jesuits had been engaged, from Sixtus V to
Benedict XIV. Clement XIII had hoped to silence their enemies by renewing the
approbation of their Institute, "but the Holy See derived no consolation,
the Society no help, Christianity no advantage from the Apostolic letters of
Clement XIII, of blessed memory, letters which were wrung from him rather than
freely given". At the end of this pope's reign "the outcry and the
complaints against the Society increasing day by day, the very princes whose
piety and hereditary benevolence towards it are favourably known of all
nations–our beloved Sons in Jesus Christ the Kings of France, Spain, Portugal,
and the two Sicilies–were forced to expel from their kingdoms, states and
provinces, all the religious of this Order, well knowing that this extreme
measure was the only remedy to such great evils." Now the complete
abolition of the order is demanded by the same princes. After long and mature
consideration the pope, "compelled by his office, which imposes on him the
obligation to procure, maintain, and consolidate with all his power the peace
and tranquillity of the Christian people–persuaded, moreover, that the Society
of Jesus is no longer able to produce the abundant fruit and the great good for
which it was instituted–and considering that, as long as this order subsists,
it is impossible for the Church to enjoy free and solid peace", resolves to
"suppress and abolish" the Society, "to annul and abrogate all
and each of its offices, functions, and administrations". The authority of
the superiors was transferred to the bishops; minute provisions were made for
the maintenance and the employment of the members of the order. The Brief
concludes with a prohibition to suspend or impede its execution, to make it the
occasion of insulting or attacking anyone, least of all the former Jesuits;
finally it enhorts the faithful to live in peace with all men and to love one
another.
The one and only motive for the suppression of the Society set forth in this
Brief is to restore the peace of the Church by removing one of the contending
parties from the battlefield. No blame is laid by the pope on the rules of the
order, or the personal conduct of its members, or the orthodoxy of their
teaching. Moreover, Father Sydney Smith, S. J. (in "The Month", CII,
62, July 1903), observes: "The fact remains that the condemnation is not
pronounced in the straightforward language of direct statement, but is merely
insinuated with the aid of dexterous phrasing"; and he contrasts this
method of stating grounds for the suppression of the Society with the vigorous
and direct language used by former popes in suppressing the Humiliati and other
orders. If Clement XIV hoped to stop the storm of unbelief raging against the
Bark of Peter by throwing its best oarsmen overboard, he was sorely mistaken.
But is unlikely that he entertained such a fallacy. He loved the Jesuits, who
had been his first teachers, his trusty advisers, the best defenders of the
Church over which he ruled. No personal animosity guided his action; the Jesuits
themselves, in agreement with all serious historians, attribute their
suppression to Clement's weakness of character, unskilled diplomacy, and that
kind of goodness of heart which is more bent on doing what is pleasing than what
is right. He was not built to hold his head above the tempest; his hesitations
and his struggles were of no avail against the enemies of the order, and his
friends found no better excuse for him than that of St. Alphonsus: What could
the poor pope do when all the Courts insisted on the suppression? The Jesuit
Cordara expresses the same mind: "I think we should not condemn the pontiff
who, after so many hesitations, has judged it his duty to suppress the Society
of Jesus. I love my order as much as any man, yet, had I been in the pope's
place I should probably have acted as he did. The Company, founded and
maintained for the good of the Church, perished for the same good; it could not
have ended more gloriously."
It should be noted that the Brief was not promulgated in the form customary
for papal Constitutions intended as laws of the Church. It was not a Bull, but a
Brief, i. e. a decree of less binding force and easier of revocation; it was not
affixed to the gates of St. Peter's or in the Campo di Fiore; it was not even
communicated in legal form to the Jesuits in Rome; the general and his
assistants alone received the notification of their suppression. In France it
was not published, the Gallican Church, and especially Beaumont, Archbishop of
Paris, resolutely opposing it as being the pope's personal deed, not supported
by the whole Church and therefore not binding on the Church of France. The King
of Spain thought the Brief too lenient, for it condemned neither the doctrine,
nor the morals, nor the discipline of his victims. The court of Naples forbade
its publication under pain of death. Maria Theresa allowed her son Joseph II to
seize the property of the Jesuits (some $10,000,000) and then, "reserving
her rights", acquiesced in the suppression "for the peace of the
Church". Poland resisted a while; the Swiss cantons of Lucerne, Fribourg,
and Solothurn never allowed the Fathers to give up their colleges. Two
non-Catholic sovereigns, Frederick of Prussia and Catherine of Russia, took the
Jesuits under their protection. Whatever may have been their motives, whether it
was to spite the pope and the Bourbon Courts or to please their Catholic
subjects and preserve for them the services of the best educators, their
intervention kept the order alive until its complete restoration in 1804.
Frederick persevered in his opposition only for a few years; in 1780 the Brief
was promulgated in his dominions. The Jesuits retained possession of all their
colleges and of the University of Breslau until 1806 and 1811, but they ranked
as secular priests and admitted no more novices. But Catherine II resisted to
the end. By her order the bishops of White Russia ignored the Brief of
suppression and commanded the Jesuits to continue to live in communities and to
go on with their usual work. Clement XIV seems to have approved of their
conduct. The empress, in order to set at rest the scruples of the Fathers,
engaged in several negotiations with the pope and had her will. In France, too,
the persecuted Jesuits were not altogether without friends. Madame Louise de
France, daughter of Louis XV, who had entered the Carmelite Order and was, with
her sisters, the leader of a band of pious women at the court of her royal
father, had worked out a scheme for re-establishing the Jesuits in six provinces
under the authority of the bishops. Bernis, however, defeated their good
intentions. He obtained from the pope a new Brief, addressed to himself and
requesting him to see that the French bishops conformed, each in his diocese, to
the Brief "Dominus ac Redemptor".
After the death of Clement XIV it was rumoured that he had retracted the
Brief of abolition by a letter of 29 June, 1774. That letter, it was said, had
been entrusted to his confessor to be given to the next pope. It was published
for the first time in 1789, at Zurich, in P. Ph. Wolf's "Allgemeine
Geschichte der Jesuiten". Although Pius VI never protested against this
statement, the authenticity of the document in question is not sufficiently
established (De la Serviére).
The first and almost the only advantage the pope reaped from his policy of
concessions was the restoration to the Holy See of Avignon and Benevento. These
provinces had been seized by the Kings of France and Naples when Clement XIII
had excommunicated their kinsman the young Duke of Parma (1768). The
restitution, following so closely on the suppression of the Jesuits, seemed the
price paid for it, although, to save appearances, the duke interceded with the
two kings in favour of the pope, and Clement, in the consistory of 17 January,
1774, took occasion from it to load the Bourbon princes with praises they little
deserved. The hostile and schismatical manœ;uvres against the Church continued
unabated in many Catholic countries. In France a royal commission for the
reformation of the religious orders had been at work for several years,
notwithstanding the energetic protests of Clement XIII; without the pope's
consent it had abolished in 1770 the congregations of Grandmont and of the
exempt Benedictines; it had threatened the Premonstratensians, the Trinitarians,
and the Minims with the same fate. The pope protested, through his nuncio to
Paris, against such abuses of the secular power, but in vain. The Celestines and
the Camaldolese were secularized that same year, 1770. The only concessions
Louis XV deigned to make was to submit to Clement the general edict for the
reformation of the French religious before its publication. This was in 1773.
The pope succeeded in obtaining its modification in several points.
In 1768 Genoa had ceded the Island of Corsica to France. At once a conflict
arose as to the introduction of "Gallican usages". The pope sent a
visitor Apostolic to the island and had the gratification of preventing the
adoption of usages in opposition to the Roman practice. Louis XV, however,
revenged himself by absolutely refusing to acknowledge the pope's suzerainty
over Corsica. Louis XV died in 1774, and one is rather surprised at the eulogy
which Clement XIV pronounced in a consistory on "the king's deep love for
the Church, and his admirable zeal for the defence of the Catholic
religion". He also hoped that the penitent death of the prince had secured
his salvation. It may be surmised that he was prompted by a desire to please the
king's youngest daughter, Madame Louise de France, Prioress of the Carmelites of
SaintDenis, for whom he had always shown a great affection, attested by
numerous favours granted to herself and to her convent.
During Clement XIV's pontificate the chief rulers in German lands were Maria
Theresa, of Austria, and Frederick the Great, of Prussia. Frederick, by
preserving the Jesuits in his dominions, rendered the Church a good, though
perhaps unintended, service. He also authorized the erection of a Catholic
church in Berlin; the pope sent a generous contribution and ordered collections
for the same purpose to be made in Belgium, the Rhineland, and Austria. Maria
Theresa lived up to the title of Regina Apostolica bestowed on her by
Clement XIII. But the doctrines of Febronius were prevalent at her court, and
more than once she came into conflict with the pope. She refused to suppress a
new edition of Febronius, as Clement XIV requested; she lent a willing ear to
the "Grievances of the German nation", a scheme of reforms in the
Church making it more dependent on the prince than on the pope; she legislated
for the religious orders of her dominions without consulting Rome. She
maintained her edict on the religious against all the pope's remonstrances, but
withdrew her protection from the authors of the "Grievances", the
Electors of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier. She also obtained from Clement in 1770
the institution of a Ruthenian bishop for the Ruthenian Catholics of Hungary. In
other parts of Germany the pope had to face similar difficulties. The number and
wealth of the religious houses, in some instances their uselessness, and
occasionally thier disorders, tempted the princes to lay violent and rapacious
hands on them. Numerous houses were to be suppressed in Bavaria for the
endowment of the new University of Ebersberg, in the Palatinate the reception of
new religious was to be stopped; Clement opposed both measures with success.
Westphalia is indebted to him for the University of Münster, erected 27 May,
1773.
In Spain Clement approved the Order of the Knights of the Immaculate
Conception, instituted by Charles III. The king also desired him to define the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception, but France blocked the way. Portugal, whilst
it made a certain outward show of goodwill towards Rome, continued to interfere
in ecclesiastical affairs and to impose on colleges and seminaries an education
more in accord with French philosophism than with the spirit of the Church. At
Naples the minster Tanucci hindered the recruitment of religious orders;
episcopal acts required the royal placet; the anti- religious press
enjoyed high protection. Poland and Russia were another source of deep grief for
Clement XIV. Whilst, politically, Poland was preparing its own ruin, the
Piarists openly taught the worst philosophism in their schools and refused to
have their houses visited by the papal nuncio at Warsaw. King Stanislaus planned
the extinction of the religious orders and favoured the Freemasons. The pope was
powerless; the few concessions he obtained from Catherine II for the Catholics
of her new province were set at naught by that headstrong woman as soon as it
suited her politics. Of her own authority she created for the annexed Catholic
Ruthenians a new diocese (Mohileff) administered by a bishop (Siestrencewicz) of
schismatic temper. Clement XIV had the satisfaction of seeing his nuncio,
Caprara, favourably received at the Court of England, and of initiating measures
for the emancipation of English Catholics. This turn in the relations between
Rome and England was due to the granting of royal honours to the king's brother
when he visited Rome in 1772; the same honours being refused to the Pretender.
In the East, the Nestorian Patriarch, Mar Simeon, and six of his suffragans,
were reunited to Rome. In Rome the pope found little favour with either the
Roman patriciate or the Sacred College; none of the many measures he took for
the betterment of his people could atone, in their eyes, for his subserviency to
the Bourbon Courts and for the suppression of the Jesuits. The last months of
his life were embittered by the consciousness of his failures; at times he
seemed crushed under the weight of sorrow. On the 10th of September, 1774, he
took to his bed, received Extreme Unction on the 21st and died piously on the
22nd of the same month. Many witnesses in the process of canonization of St.
Alphonsus of Liguori attested that the saint had been miraculously present at
the death-bed of Clement XIV to console and fortify him in his last hour. The
doctors, who opened the dead body in presence of many spectators, ascribed death
to scorbutic and hæmorrhoidal dispositions of long standing, aggravated by
excessive labour and by the habit of provoking artificial perspiration even
during the greatest heat. Notwithstanding the doctors' certificate, the "Spanish
party" and historical romancers attributed death to poison administered by the
Jesuits. The mortal remains of Clement XIV rest in the church of the Twelve
Apostles.
Bullarium Romanum: Clementis
XIV epistolæ et brevia, ed. THEINER (Paris, 1852); CORDARA,
Memoirs on the suppression of the Jesuits, published by DÖLLINGER
in Beitrage zur politischen, kirchlichen u. Culturgeschichte (Vienna,
1882).–As to the Lettres intéressantes de Clément XIV, published by
the MARCHESE CARACCIOLO in 1776,
Father Sydney Smith, S. J., says, in a note to one of the articles in The
Month (CI, 180, Feb., 1903) referred to below: "There has been much
discussion about these letters. The Marchese Caracciolo in his Preface is
suspiciously reticent as to the channels through which he obtained them, and
gives them in a French translation instead of in the original Italian. On this
account, and because it is difficult to believe that some of the contents come
from Fra Lorenzo [as Clement XIV was called in religion], many critics have
rejected the entire collection as spurious. But VON REUTMONT
thinks (Ganganelli–Papst Clement–seine Briefe und seine Zeit,
1847, Preface 40-42) that it is in substance a genuine collection, though some
of the letters are spurious and interpolated. Von Reumont argues very justly
that it would hardly be possible to fabricate so many letters, addressed to
correspondents most of whom were alive at the time of the publication, and yet
impart to them the unity, distinctness, and spontanedity of a living
character."–CHRETINEAUJOLY,
Clément XIV et les Jésuites (Paris, 1847); Le Pape Clément XIV,
Lettres au P. Theiner; MASSON, Le Cardinal de
Bernis (Paris, 1884); ROUSSEAU, Expulsion des Jésuites
en Espagne (Paris, 1907); DE LA SERVIÉRE
in VACANT, Dict. de théol. cath. (Paris, 1907),
s. v. Clément XIV; The Dublin Review (1855), XXXIX, 107; SMITH,
The Suppression of the Society of Jesus, articles in The Month
(London, 1902-3), XCIX, C, CI, CII; RAVIGNAN, Clément
XIII et Clément XIV (Paris, 1854).
J. WILHELM
Transcribed by WGKofron
With thanks to St. Mary's Church, Akron, Ohio
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IV
Copyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton Company
Nihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, Censor
Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
