22 September 1774 A.D. Clement XIV (Lorenzo Ganganelli) Dies—Rome’s 249th Senior Presbyter
22 September 1774 A.D. Clement XIV (Lorenzo Ganganelli) Dies—Rome’s 249th Senior
Presbyter; His Election Involved Base
Intriques, Interferences & Unwanted Pressures; the Enemies—Gallicanism, Jansenism,
Febronianism, & Rationalism in France, Spain, Naples, Portugal, & Parma
(Not to Mention Protestant Lands);
Jesuits Repressed in France, Spain & Portugal
Wilhelm,
Joseph. "Pope Clement
XIV." The
Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton
Company, 1908.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04034a.htm. Accessed 3 Oct 2014.
Pope Clement XIV
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 ofpapabili. 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, thetotal 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 Benevento, 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 Briefof 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 Gesùrang 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 date21 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 Christianpeople — 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 exhorts 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 Xompany,
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 formto 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 theHoly 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 manœuvres 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 Saint-Denis, 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 minister 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 atWarsaw. 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 schismatictemper. 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. (See also SOCIETY OF JESUS.)
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
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