BENEDICT XIV.: THE SCHOLAR-POPE
The seventeen Popes who occupied the Vatican between Sixtus V. and
Benedict XIV. do not call for individual notice. With common integrity
of life and general mediocrity of intelligence they guarded and
administered their lessened inheritance. A few fragments of the lost
provinces were regained--Ferrara and Urbino were reunited to the
Papal States, and Protestantism was crushed in southern Germany and
Poland--but the general situation was unchanged. The Papal conception
of European life, the conviction that heresy must and would be only a
temporary diversion of the minds of men, was definitely overthrown,
and the Church of Rome became one of various flourishing branches of
the Christian Church. The interest of the historian passes from the
personalities of the Popes to the movements of thought which herald or
prepare the next great revolution.
In regard to that specific development of European thought which we
call the birth of science we are, perhaps, apt to misread its earlier
stages because we find it in its final stage so destructive of old
traditions. The Popes of the seventeenth century are too much flattered
when they are credited with a distinct perception of the menace of
science and a resolute opposition to it. Properly speaking, they had
no attitude toward "science," but, as the history of science and the
fortune of such men as Giordano Bruno, Galilei, and Vesalius show,
they resented and hampered departures from the stock of traditional
learning.[324] On the other hand, the period we are considering was
marked by the phenomenal material success and the moral degeneration of
the greatest force the Counter-Reformation had produced--the Society of
Jesus. The Jesuits did far more than the Papacy to arrest the advance
of Protestantism and to conquer new lands for the Church, but the
diplomatic principles inherited from their founder and the desperate
exigencies of a stubborn war led them into a pernicious casuistry,
while prosperity led to such relaxation as it had produced in the
old religious bodies. 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 compromise makes him
one of the most singular and interesting Popes of the new era.
Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini was born at Bologna, of good family, on
March 31, 1675. At the age of thirteen he entered the Clementine
College at Rome, and with the advance of years he became a very
industrious student of law--canon and civil--and history. He took
degrees in theology and law, and was incorporated in the Roman system
as Consultor to the Holy Office, Canon of St. Peter's, and Prelate
of the Roman Court. Successive Popes made the indefatigable scholar
Archbishop of Theodosia _in partibus_, Archbishop of Ancona and
Cardinal (1728), and Archbishop of Bologna (1731). Lambertini was a
rare type of prelate. He did not, as so many high-born prelates did,
relieve the tedium of the clerical estate with the hunt, the banquet,
and the mistress. His episcopal duties were discharged with the most
rigorous fidelity, his clergy were sedulously exhorted to cultivate
learning and virtue, and his leisure was devoted to the composition
of erudite treatises on _The Beatification of the Servants of God_,
_The Sacrifice of the Mass_, _The Festivals of Our Lord Jesus Christ_,
and _Canonical Questions_. Yet the Cardinal-Archbishop was no ascetic
in spirit, and there was much gossip about his conversation. He loved
Tasso and Ariosto as much as juridical writings. He liked witty
society, and his good stories circulated beyond the little group of his
scholarly friends. President de Brosses visited him at Bologna in 1739,
the year before he became Pope, and wrote of him:
A good fellow, without any airs, who told us some very good stories
about women (_filles_) or about the Roman court. I took care to commit
some of them to memory and will find them useful. He especially liked
to tell or to hear stories about the Regent and his confidant Cardinal
Dubois. He used to say, "Tell me something about this Cardinal del
Bosco." I ransacked my memory, and told him all the tales I knew. His
conversation is very pleasant: he is a clever man, full of gaiety and
well read. In his speech he makes use of certain expletive particles
which are not cardinalitial. In that and other things he is like
Cardinal Camus; for he is otherwise irreproachable in conduct, very
charitable, and very devoted to his archiepiscopal duties. But the
first and most essential of his duties is to go three times a week to
the Opera.[325]
Lambertini's liberty and joviality of speech did not, in spite of his
strict virtue and most zealous administration, commend him to the more
severe cardinals, and when Clement XII. died, on February 6, 1740,
he was not regarded as a candidate for the Papacy. But the struggle
of French, Spanish, and Austrian partisans continued for six months
without prospect of a settlement, and in the intolerable heat of the
summer the cardinals cast about, as usual, for an outsider. Lambertini
had humorously recommended himself from time to time. He used to say,
President de Brosses reports: "If you want a good fellow (_coglione_--a
particularly gross word) choose me."[326] The Emperor Joseph II., who
did not want an inflexible Pope, supported his candidature, and he was
assuredly the most distinguished of the cardinals to whom the wearied
voters now looked. He was elected on August 17th, and he took the name
of Benedict XIV.
He was now sixty-five years old: a round, full-faced, merry little
man, with piercing small eyes and an obstinate resolution to live at
peace with the world. A few years later,[327] he describes his daily
life to his friend Cardinal Tencin. He rises early and takes a cup of
chocolate and a crust. At midday he has a soup, an entrée, a roast,
and a pear: on "fast" days he reduces himself to a _pot-au-feu_ and a
pear, but it does not agree with him to observe the law of abstinence
from meat, and he advises the cardinals to follow his example. In
the evening he takes only a glass of water with a little cinnamon,
and he retires very late. He works hard all day and feels that he is
justified in seeking relief in sprightly conversation. Indeed, when
one surveys the vast published series of Benedict's Bulls (some of
which are lengthy and severe treatises), rescripts, works, and letters,
one realizes that his industry was phenomenal. When he had to condemn
some volume of the new sceptical literature which was springing up
in Europe, he read it himself three times and reflected long on it.
His interest ranged from England, whose political affairs he followed
closely, to the mountains of Syria and the missions of China. Every
branch of Papal administration had his personal attention. He thought
little of the cardinals, and often pours genial irony on them in his
innumerable letters. Of his two predecessors, Benedict XIII. "had
not the least idea of government," and Clement XII. "passed his life
in conversation," and "it is with the oxen from this stable [the
cardinals promoted by them] that we have to work today."[328] In
finance, politics, administration, liturgy, and all other respects he
had inherited a formidable task, and he discharged it in such wise that
he died at peace with all except his Roman reactionaries. The Catholic
rulers deeply appreciated him. Frederick of Prussia had a genial regard
for him. Horace Walpole celebrated his virtues in Latin verse, and
one of the Pitts treasured a bust of him. Voltaire, through Cardinal
Acquaviva, presented his _Mahomet_ to him in 1746, and the amiable
Pope, quite innocent of the satire on Christianity, wrote to tell
Voltaire how he had successfully defended his Latin verses.[329]
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. Yet the treasury was empty, and the finances were shockingly
disorganized. Although Clement XII. had introduced the lottery to
support his extravagant expenditure, the Papal income in 1739 fell
short of the expenses by 200,000 crowns a year, and the Camera owed
between fifty and sixty million crowns--President de Brosses says
380,000,000 francs--to the _Monti_, or funds out of which the Popes
paid life-incomes. Smuggling was so general, even among ambassadors and
cardinals, that half the Papal revenue was lost. Cardinals Acquaviva
and Albani each granted immunity from excise to four thousand traders:
so Benedict wrote to Tencin in 1743. A third of the population of Rome
consisted of ecclesiastics who lived on the Papal system, and a third
were foreigners of no greater financial value; while the natives could
so easily obtain food at the innumerable monasteries, or by begging,
that there was little incentive to industry.
Benedict XIV. had no financial capacity, but the desperate and ever
worsening condition of the treasury spurred him to work. He restricted
the immunities from excise, cut down the extravagant payment of the
troops, and severely curtailed the number of his servants. In a few
years he had a surplus, which he divided among the impoverished nobles.
He then reduced the taxes, had new factories built, and encouraged the
introduction of new methods into agriculture. His zeal in suppressing
"usury" was not so fortunate, but he restored the Papal finances to
such a degree that he could at length indulge his cultural tastes.
Sandini gives a list of the monuments he restored at Rome--including
the new façade with which he disfigured Sta. Maria Maggiore--and we
know from his letters that he was assiduous in collecting classical
statues and fine books for the Roman galleries and libraries. He
founded four academies at Rome--for the study of Roman history and
antiquities, Christian history and antiquities, the history of the
Councils, and liturgy--and once in each week presided, at the Quirinal,
over a sitting of each academy. To the Roman university (Sapienza) he
added chairs of chemistry, mathematics, and art, and he pressed in
every way the higher education of the clergy. In 1750 he appointed
a woman teacher, Maria Gaetana d'Agnesi, of mathematics at Bologna
University, and wrote her a gracious letter commending the ambition of
her sex.
Jansenists and philosophers were now fiercely exposing the weaknesses
of Papal culture, and Benedict, who freely criticized the errors of
his predecessors, attempted some revision of the mass of legends which
had been accepted by the Church. In 1741 he appointed a commission to
revise the Breviary, but the extensive alterations they proposed to
make in the lives of the saints alarmed the reactionaries. On April
26, 1743, we find Benedict wearily complaining to Tencin of the
difficulty of reform: "There is now all over the world such a disdain
of the Holy See that--I will not say the protest of a bishop, a city,
or a nation--but the opposition of a single monk is enough to thwart
the most salutary and most pious designs."[330] The French clergy had
been compelled in 1680 and 1736 to issue more critical editions of
the Breviary, and Benedict wished to provide one for the universal
Church. But the bigots were too strong for the Pope and the scheme
of reform lies in the dust of the Vatican archives, while the Roman
Breviary still contains legends of the most remarkable character. In
reforming the Martyrology (1748) the Pope was more successful, and
he published a new Ceremonial for Bishops (1752). He also published
an indult permitting any diocese that cared to reduce the number of
Church-festivals. 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 at once made it plain
that his policy would be one of deliberate and judicious compromise.
Anxious though he was, especially in view of the Italian ambitions of
Maria Theresa, about his temporal possessions, he placed his spiritual
power and responsibility in the foreground, and on temporal matters he
made more concessions than any Pope of equal wit and will had ever
made. He was, he told Tencin, "the mortal enemy of secrets and useless
mysticism." For disguised Jesuits and intriguing Nuncii he had no
employment. He took court after court, with which his predecessor had
embroiled the Papacy, and came to an agreement which almost invariably
satisfied them; and in the war of the Spanish succession, when Spanish
and Austrian troops in turn violated his territory, he remained
strictly neutral.
The chief problem in France was the conflict of the Jesuits and the
Jansenists, which was complicated by a revival of the Gallican spirit
that put difficulties in the way of Papal interference. The Bull
_Unigenitus_, with which Clement XI. had sought to extinguish the
controversy, had increased the disorder, and the zealots pressed the
Pope to intervene. Parlement would have resented his interference, and
it was not until 1755, when the Assembly of the Clergy failed to find a
solution, that Louis XV. asked the Pope to make a further declaration.
The credit of his moderate Encyclical[331] is not wholly due to him.
The French asked him to refrain from pressing the _Unigenitus_ as a
standard of faith and merely to demand external respect for it. This
agreed with the Pope's moderate disposition, but the Jesuits and
other zealots at Rome were enraged, and Choiseul--without Benedict's
knowledge, of course--made extensive use of bribery to win the College
of Cardinals. Benedict's letters reflect his weariness between the
antagonistic parties and frequently express that he is willing to
respect Gallican susceptibilities to any extent short of a surrender of
the faith. A draft of the Encyclical was submitted to the French court
before it was published. Both the Jesuits and the lawyers attacked it,
but the Parlement was won to the King by an attempt on his life and the
Jesuits soon found all their energy needed to defend their existence.
With Spain the Pope concluded one of the most remarkable Concordats in
Papal history. There had gradually been established a custom by which
the Papacy appointed to all benefices which fell vacant during eight
months of the year, and the bishops and their chapters appointed to
vacant benefices during the remaining third of the year. The court had
the right of appointment only to benefices in Granada and the Indies.
As a natural result, Spanish ecclesiastics crowded to Rome, and it
was estimated that the Dataria derived from them about 250,000 crowns
a year. Spain resented the arrangement, but the clerical population
of Rome clung tenaciously to it. Benedict in 1751 entered into secret
negotiations with Spain, and contrived to keep them secret until 1753,
when he startled and irritated Rome by publishing his famous Concordat.
By this he granted the Spanish King the right to nominate to all except
fifty-two benefices in Spain and America. The cardinals bitterly
complained that they had not been consulted, while the officials
deplored the abandonment of Papal prestige and the cessation of so much
profitable employment. Benedict had, however, made a shrewd bargain
with Ferdinand VI. The King had to pay a capital sum of 1,143,330
crowns, which, at an interest of three per cent., would cover the
yearly loss to the Curia. At a later date the Pope released the Spanish
Infanta from the dignity of cardinal, yet permitted him to retain a
large part of his clerical income.
A similar agreement ended the long friction with Portugal and (in 1740)
gave John V. the right to present to all the episcopal sees and abbeys
in his dominions; and in 1748 the Pope further gratified the King with
the title of _Fidelissimus_. The King of Sardinia received, soon after
Benedict's succession, the title of Vicar of all the Papal fiefs in
his dominions and the right, for an annual payment of 2000 crowns, to
gather their revenues. Naples, in turn, was pacified, after many years
of dangerous friction. There had been stern quarrels about jurisdiction
over the clergy, and by a Concordat of the year 1741 Benedict consented
to the creation of a supreme court, with an equal number of clerical
and lay judges and an ecclesiastical president, for the trial of such
cases. With Venice the Pope was less successful. The decaying Republic
had a standing quarrel with Austria about the patriarchate of Aquileia;
Austria, which possessed part of the territory, would not acknowledge
the authority of the Venetian patriarch. Benedict appointed a Vicar for
the Austrian section, and Venice, ever ready to flout Papal orders,
drove the Nuncio from the city. The Pope thereupon divided the province
into two archbishoprics, but Venice still angrily protested and the
dispute remained unsettled at Benedict's death.
Austria gave the Pope his most anxious hours. The joy of Rome at the
fidelity of southern Germany was in the eighteenth century clouded by
the growth of a spirit akin to Gallicanism: the spirit which would
presently be known as Febronianism. Charles VI. had in 1740 left the
Empire to his elder daughter, Maria Theresa, and Spain had contested
the succession in the hope of winning for itself the provinces of
Lombardy and Tuscany. In the war which followed Benedict took no side,
but the conflicting armies devastated his territory and approached
very near to Rome. His letters to Tencin reflect his distress and
anxiety, no less than his helplessness. When the war was over, he sent
a representative to the conference at Aix-la-Chapelle, where his rights
were endangered by the contest of the two ambitious queens; Elizabeth
of Spain was the last of the Farnese and was disposed to claim for her
son the principality which Paul III. had wantonly conferred on his son
Pier Luigi. The chief question that interested the Papacy was whether
Don Philip should receive the investiture of Parma and Piacenza from
Rome or the Empress, and Benedict had the satisfaction of seeing it
virtually settled in favour of Rome. On Paul III. himself, and other
nepotist Popes, Benedict passes a very severe judgment in his letters.
For his part he severely excluded his relatives from Rome, and when a
young son of his nephew came to study at the Clementine College, he
took care that the boy should receive no particular favour.
It is one of the remarkable features of Benedict's Pontificate that
he won considerable respect even in the Protestant lands. Englishmen,
perhaps, did not know, as we know from the Pope's letters, how deeply
he sympathized with the exiled Stuarts. "James III." lived for some
time at Rome on a pension provided by France, Spain, and the Papacy,
and Benedict had often to relieve the financial embarrassment of the
foolish and extravagant prince. His second son became Cardinal York,
and, in conferring the dignity on him, Benedict declared that he would
be pleased to withdraw it if ever Providence recalled him to the throne
of his fathers. In spite of these amiable sympathies, Benedict was
much appreciated by cultivated Englishmen, and in 1753 he reconstituted
and enlarged the English hierarchy.
With Frederic of Prussia, also, he had friendly relations. He was the
first Pope to recognize the title of "King of Prussia" assumed in 1701
by the Electors of Brandenburg, and in this again he overruled the
opposition of the cardinals. In 1744 Frederic begged the Pope to make
Scatfgoch, a Breslau canon whom the King liked, coadjutor to the Bishop
of Breslau. Scatfgoch talked with scandalous license about religion and
morals; it was said at Rome that he dipped his crucifix into his wine
to give the Saviour the first drink. Benedict, to Frederic's anger,
refused; but three years later, when the bishop died, and the Nuncio
reported the conversion of the canon, the Pope gratified Frederic by
making him bishop. Frederic permitted the erection of a Catholic chapel
at Berlin.
The new Catholic world beyond the seas made more than one claim on the
untiring Pope. Immediately after his election we find him sending a
Vicar Apostolic to settle the troubles of the Maronites of Syria, and
in 1744 he reconciled and regulated the affairs of the Greek Melchites
of Antioch. In the farther East a fierce controversy still raged, both
in China and India, regarding the heathen rites and practices which the
Jesuit missionaries permitted their native converts to retain. Clement
XI., Innocent XIII., and Benedict XIII. had successively employed him,
when he was an official of the Curia, to prepare a verdict on these
"Chinese and Malabar rites," but it was reported that the Jesuits
still defied the orders of the Popes. In his private letters to
Tencin, Benedict sternly condemns the "tergiversations" of the Jesuit
missionaries, but in his Papal pronouncements he is more cautious. His
Bulls _Ex Quo Singulari_,[332] which puts an end to the trouble in
China, and _Omnium Solicitudinum_,[333] which condemns the practices
in Malabar (India), are scholarly and severe treatises. They hardly
mention the Jesuits, but they leave no loophole for those casuistic
missionaries. From the other side of the globe Benedict received
complaints that Christians were still enslaving the American natives,
on the pretext of converting them, and he renewed the prohibition
issued by Paul III. and Urban VIII.
From all quarters of the globe Benedict received heated complaints
about the Jesuits. They permitted the worship of ancestors in China,
and closed their eyes to Hindu charms and amulets in India. 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. His
friend Cardinal Passionei, a worldly cardinal, of easy ways, who spent
his days in luxurious ease at Frascati, often urged him to reform the
Society, but it was not until the last year of his life that he took
any step in that direction. Portugal was now approaching its great
struggle with the Jesuits, and Benedict, on April 1, 1758, directed
Cardinal Saldanha to inspect and report upon the condition of the
Jesuit houses and colleges in that country. 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. His Bull _Magnæ Nobis Admirationis_[334] prescribes,
in the case of mixed marriages, the rules which are enforced in the
Church today. He forbade monks to practise surgery or dispense drugs;
though Europe would have been more completely indebted to him in this
respect if he had not made an exception in favour of the atrocious drug
known as "theriac" and the foolish compound which went by the name of
"apoplectic balsam." He condemned Freemasonry,[335] though his decree
was not enforced. But one must glance over the thirteen volumes of his
_Bullarium_ and the seventeen volumes of his religious and liturgical
works if one would realize his massive industry and devotion to his
duties.
In the spring of 1758 his robust constitution yielded to the ravages
of gout, labour, and anxiety, and he died on May 3d. He was not,
as some say, "the idol of Rome." The cardinals felt the disdain of
them which he often expresses in his letters, and many of the clergy
regarded him as too severe on them and too pliant to the laity. Neither
was he a genius. Clearness of mind, immense industry, and sober ways
are the sources of his output. His works are not read today even by
ecclesiastics, and it is ludicrous to represent them as his title
to immortality. Yet Benedict XIV. was a great Pope: a wise ruler of
the Church at a time when once more, unconsciously, it approached a
world-crisis. The magnitude of the change which was taking place in
Europe he never perceived, but his policy was wise in the measure
of his perception, and his geniality of temperament, united to so
wholehearted a devotion to his duty, won some respect for the name
of Pope in lands where it had been for two hundred years a thing of
contempt.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 324: Modern research has easily settled that Galilei was
not physically ill-treated, and that there was probably no intention
to carry out the formal threat of torture. But this refutation of the
excesses of the older anti-Papal historians leaves the serious part of
the indictment intact. Galilei was forbidden by the Holy Office in 1616
to advance as a positive discovery his view of the earth's position.
In 1632, to the great indignation of Urban VIII., he disregarded this
prohibition, which he thought a dead letter, and was condemned by the
Inquisition as "vehemently suspected of heresy." The crime against
culture is not materially lessened by the fact that the Inquisition
lodged the astronomer in its most comfortable rooms.]
[Footnote 325: _Lettres familières_ (1858), i., 250-1. The President
was in Rome during the conclave in the following year and repeated that
Lambertini was "licentious in speech but exemplary in conduct" (ii.,
399). On a later page (439) he frankly describes the Pope as "indecent
in speech." There is a passage in one of the Pope's later letters
to Cardinal Tencin which may illustrate his censure. Benedict tells
the Cardinal that he has bought a nude Venus for his collection, and
finds that the Prince and Princess of Württemberg have, with a diamond
ring, scratched their names on a part of the statue which one may not
particularize as plainly as the Pope does (_Correspondance de Benoît
XIV._, ii., 268).]
[Footnote 326: _Lettres familières_, ii., 439.]
[Footnote 327: September 29, 1745.]
[Footnote 328: Letter to Tencin August 1, 1753 (ii., 282).]
[Footnote 329: The correspondence is reproduced in Artaud de Montor's
_Histoire des Souverains Pontifes_ (1849), vii., 79. Benedict was
severely censured by the pious, and he declared to Cardinal Tencin that
he "did not find it clear that Voltaire was a stranger to the faith"
(i., 246). The biography of Benedict, one of the most interesting
of the Popes, is still to be written. F.X. Kraus, in his edition
of Benedict's letters, reproduces fragments of a pretentious Latin
biography by a contemporary, Scarselli, and M. Guarnacci has a sketch
in his _Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum_ (1751, vol. ii., col. 487-94).
These relate only to his earlier years. A. Sandini (_Vitæ Pontificum
Romanorum_, 1754) has only three pages on Benedict, and the anonymous
_Vie du Pape Benoît XIV._ (1783--really written by Cardinal Caraccioli)
is not critical. The biographical sketches in Artaud de Montor and
Ranke are quite inadequate. But the biographer has now a rich material
in Benedict's Bulls (complete _Bullarium_, 13 vols., 1826 and 1827),
works (chief edition, 17 vols., 1839-1846, and three further works
edited by Heiner in 1904), and letters. Of the latter the best editions
are those of F.X. Kraus (_Briefe Benedicts XIV. an den Canonicus Pier
Francesco Peggi_, 1884), Morani ("Lettere di Benedetto XIV. all'
arcidiacono Innocenzo Storani" in the _Archivio Storico per le Marche
e per l'Umbria_, 1885), Fresco ("Lettere inedite di Benedetto XIV. al
Cardinale Angelo Maria Querini" in the _Nuovo Archivio Veneto_, 1909,
tomo xviii., pp. 5-93, and xix., pp. 159-215), "Lettere inedite di
Benedetto XIV. al Cardinale F. Tamburini" in the _Archivio della R.
Società Romana di Storia Patria_, vol. xxxiv. (1911), pp. 35-73, and E.
de Heeckeren (_Correspondance de Benoît XIV._, 2 vols., 1912).]
[Footnote 330: I., 49.]
[Footnote 331: _Ex omnibus Christiani orbis_, Oct. 16, 1756. It
prescribes silence on the disputed issues and leaves it to confessors
to determine whether their penitents are so wilfully rebellious against
the Bull _Unigenitus_ as to be excluded from the sacraments.]
[Footnote 332: July 1, 1742.]
[Footnote 333: September 12, 1744.]
[Footnote 334: June 29, 1748.]
[Footnote 335: March 18, 1751.]