CLEMENT
32
CLEMENT
in Trastevere for the Riarii, and now known as the
Palazzo Corsini (purchased in 1884 by the Italian
Government, and now the seat of the Regia Accademia
dei Lincei). In 1754, his nephew, Cardinal Neri Cor-
sini, founded there the famous Corsini Library, which
in 1905 included about 70,000 books and pamphlets,
22S8 incunabula or works printed in the first fifty
or sixty years after the discovery of printing, 2511
manuscripts, and 600 autographs. Retaining his ex-
traordinary faculties and his cheerful resignation to
the end, he died in the Quirinal in his eighty-eighth
year. His remains were transferred to his magnifi-
cent tomb in the Lateran, 20 July, 1742.
Fabron'ius, De vitd et rebus gestis dementis XII (Rome, 1760), also in Fassini, Suppleniento to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Natalis .\lexander (Bassano, 177S); Passerini, Genealo- gia e Storia delta famigtia Corsini (Florence, 1858); Von Reu- MONT, Gesch. d. Sladl Rom (Berlin, 1867), III, iii, 653-55; NovAES, Elemenli della storia de' armmi ptmlcfici (Rome. 1821- 25); Hergenrother-Kihsch, Kirr}irn<i< sc/if /;^' (4th ed., Frie- burg, 1907), III (bibliography); Ajitaedhk Muntoh, Htsior;/ o/ the Roman Pontiffs (New York, I^iiT . U
Ja.mes F. Loughlin.
Clement XIII, Pope (Carlo della Torre Rez- zoNico), b. at Venice, 7 March, 1693; d. at Rome, 2 February, 1769. He was educated by the Jesuits at Bologna, took his degrees in law at Padua, and in 1716 was appointed at Rome referendary of the two depart- ments knoi\Ti as the " Signatura Jus- titia;" and the "Signatura Gratiie". He was made governor of Rieti in 1716, of Fano in 1721, and Auditor of the Rota for Venice in 1725. In 1737 he was made cardinal-deacon, and in 1743 Bishop of Padua, where he distinguished himself by his zeal for the formation andsanctification of his Arms of clergy, to promote which he held a Clement XIII ^y^^^j -^ j^^g^ ^^j published a very re- markable pastoral on the priestly state. His personal life was in keeping with his teaching, and the Jansenist AbbeClement, a grudging witness, tells us that " he was called the saint (by liis people), and was an exem- plary man who, notwithstanding the immense reve- nues of his diocese and his private estate, was always without money owing to the lavishness of his alnis- deeds, and would give away even his hnen". In 1747 he became cardinal-priest, and on 6 July, 1758, he was elected pope to succeed Benedict XIV. It was -nith tears that he submitted to the will of the electors, for he gauged well the force and direction of the storm which was gathering on the political horizon.
Regalism and Jansenism were the traditional ene- mies of the Holy See in its government of the Church, but a still more formidable foe was rising into power and using the other two as its instruments. This was the party of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists, the "Philosophers" as they liked to call themselves. They were men of talent and highly educated, and by means of these gifts had drawn over to themselves many admirers and adherents from among the ruling classes, with the result that by the time of Clement XIII, they had their representatives in power in the Portuguese and in all the five Bourbon Courts. Their enmity wa.s radically against the Christian religion it- self, asputtinga restraint on their hcence of thought and action. In their private correspondence they called it the Inftime (the infamous one), and looked "forward to its .speedy extinction through the success of their policy; but they felt tlwit in their relations with the pub- lic, and cspcci;Uly wit h the sovereigns, it was necessary to feign some kind of Catholic belief. In planning this war against the Church, they were agreed that the first step must be the destruction of the Jesuits. "When we have destroyed the Jesuits", wrote Vol- taire to Helvetius, in 1761, "we .shall have easy work with the Injdme. " And their method was to per-
suade the sovereigns that the Jesuits were the chief
obstacle to their Regalist pretensions, and thereby
a danger to the peace of their realms; and to support
this view by the diffusion of defamatory literature,
likewise by inviting the co-operation of those who,
whilst blind to the character of their ulterior ends,
stood with them for doctrinal or other reasons in their
antipathy to the Society of Jesus. Such was the
political situation with which Clement XIII saw him-
self confronted when he began his pontificate.
Portugal. — His attention was called in the first instance to Portugal, where the attack on the Society had already commenced. Joseph I, a weak and voluptuous prince, was a mere puppet in the hands of his minister, Sebastiao Carvalho, afterwards Mar- quis de Pombal, a secret adherent of the Voltairian opinions, and bent on the destruction of the Society. A rebellion of the Indians in the Uruguay Reductions gave him his first opportunity. The caiuse of the re- bellion was obvious, for the natives had been ordered to abandon forthwith their cultivated lands and migrate into the virgin forest. But, as they were under the care of the Jesuit missionaries, Carvalho declared that these must have instigated the natives. Moreover, on 3 September, 1758, Joseph I was shot at, apparently by the injured husband of a lady he had setluccd. Pombal held a secret trial in which he pronounced the whole Tavora family guilty, and with them three Jesuit Fathers, against whom the sole evidence was that they had been friends of the Tavoras. Then, on the pretext that all Jesuits thought alike, he imprisoned their superiors, some hundred in number, in his subterranean dungeons, and wrote in the king's name to Rome for permission from the Holy Sec to punish the guilty clerics. Clement did not see his way to refuse a request backed bj' the king's assurances that he had good grounds for his charges, but he begged that the accused might have a careful trial, and that the innocent might not be included in a punishment the}' had not deserved. The pope's letter was written with exquisite courtesy and consideration, but Pombal pronounced it in- sulting to his master and returned it to the sender. Then he shipped off all the Jesuits from Portugal and its colonies, save the superiors who were still detained in their prisons, and sent them to Civitavecchia, "as a present to the pope", without a penny from their confiscated funds left to them for their maintenance. Clement, however, received them kindly, and pro- vided for their needs. It was to be expected that diplomatic relations would not long continue after these events; they were severed in 1760 by Pombal, who sent back the nuncio, Acciajuoli, and recalled his own ambassador: nor were these relations restored till the next pontificate. Pombal had seen the neces- sity of supporting his administrative measures by an endeavour to destroy the good name of his victims with the public. For this purpose he caused various defamatory publications to be written, chief among which was the "Brief Relation", in which the Ameri- can Jesuits were represented as having set up an inde- pendent kingdom in South America under their own sovereignty, and of tyrannizing over the Indians, all in the interest of an insatiable ambition and avarice. These libels were spread broadcast, especially through Portugal and Spain, and many bishops from Spain and elsewhere wrote to the pope protesting against charges so improbable in themselves, ami so incom- patible with their experience of the order in their own jurisdictions. The te.xt of many of their letters and of Clement XIII's approving replies may be seen in the "Appendices" to Pdre de Ravignan's "Clement XIII et Clement XIV".
Franct;. — It was to be expected that the Society's many enemies in I'" ranee would be stimulateil to follow in the fDotstejis of Pombal. Th<' attack was opened by the Parlement, which was predominantly Jansen-
