Pope Clement XIII

Pope Clement XIII (Latin: Clemens XIII; 7 March 1693 – 2 February 1769), born
Pope
Carlo della Torre di Rezzonico, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the
Clement XIII
Papal States from 6 July 1758 to his death in 1769. He was installed on 16 July
1758.[1] Bishop of Rome

His pontificate was overshadowed by the constant pressure to suppress the Society
of Jesus but despite this, he championed their order and also proved to be their
greatest defender at that time. He was also one of the few early popes who favoured
dialogue with Old Catholic Protestants and to this effect hoped to mend the schism
with the Catholic Church that existed in England and the low countries. These
efforts ultimately bore little fruition.

Contents
Biography
Early life
Pontificate
Election to the papacy
Actions Papacy 6 July 1758
The Jesuits began
Ecumenism Papacy 2 February 1769
Other activities
ended
Death
Predecessor Benedict XIV
See also
Notes
Successor Clement XIV

External links Orders

Ordination 23 December 1731
Consecration 19 March 1743
Biography by Pope Benedict
XIV
Created 20 December 1737
Early life
Cardinal by Pope Clement
Carlo della Torre di Rezzonico was born in 1693 to a recently ennobled family of XII
Venice, the second of two children of the man who bought the unfinished palace on
Personal details
the Grand Canal (now Ca' Rezzonico) and finished its construction. Born to
Giovanni Battista Rezzonico and Vittoria Barbarigo, his brother was Aurelio.
Birth name Carlo della Torre di
Rezzonico
He received a Jesuit education in Bologna and later studied at the University of Born 7 March 1693
Padua where he obtained his doctorate in canon law and civil law. From there, he Venice, Republic of
travelled to Rome where he attended the Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastical Venice
Nobles.
Died 2 February 1769
(aged 75)
Rome, Papal States
In 1716 Rezzonico became the Referendary of the Apostolic Signatura and in 1721 Previous Cardinal-Deacon of
was appointed Governor of Fano.[2] He was ordained to the priesthood on 23 post San Nicola in
December 1731 in Rome. Pope Clement XII appointed him to the cardinalate in Carcere (1738–
1737 as the Cardinal-Deacon of San Nicola in Carcere and also filled various 1747)
important posts in theRoman Curia.[3] Bishop of Padua
(1743–1758)
Rezzonico was chosen as Bishop of Padua in 1743 and he received episcopal
consecration in Rome by Pope Benedict XIV himself.[3] Rezzonico visited his Cardinal-Priest of
diocese on frequent occasions and reformed the way that the diocese ran, paying Santa Maria in Ara
attention to the social needs of the diocese. He was the first to do this in five Coeli (1747–1755)
decades.[4] He later opted to become the Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria in Aracoeli Cardinal-Priest of
in 1747 and later to become the Cardinal-Priest of San Marco in [5]
1755. San Marco (1755–
1758)

Pontificate Coat of arms

Other popes named Clement

Election to the papacy
Pope Benedict XIV died of gout in 1758 and theCollege of Cardinals gathered at the
Papal styles of
papal conclave in order to elect a successor. Direct negotiations between the rival
Pope Clement XIII
factions resulted in the proposal for the election of Rezzonico. On the evening of 6
July 1758, Rezzonico received 31 votes out of a possible 44, one more than the
required amount. He selected the pontifical name of "Clement XIII" in honor of
Pope Clement XII, who elevated him to the cardinalate.
Reference style His Holiness
Rezzonico was crowned as pontiff on 16 July 1758 by the protodeacon, Cardinal Spoken style Your Holiness
Alessandro Albani.
Religious style Holy Father
In the same year, the Rezzonico family celebrated Ludovico Rezzonico's marriage Posthumous style None
into the powerful Savorgnan family. Rezzonico was notorious for his rampant
nepotism throughout his pontificate.

Actions
Notwithstanding the meekness and affability of his upright and moderate character, he was modest
to a fault (he had the classical sculptures in the Vatican provided with mass-produced fig leaves)
and generous with his extensive private fortune.

The Jesuits
Clement XIII's pontificate was repeatedly disturbed by disputes respecting the pressures to
suppress the Jesuits coming from the progressive Enlightenment circles of the philosophes in
Cardinal Rezzonico
France.
between 1737 and 1744
Clement XIII placed the Encyclopédie of D'Alembert and Diderot on the Index, but this index was
not as effective as it had been in the previous century. More unexpected resistance came from the
less progressive courts of Spain, theTwo Sicilies, and Portugal. In 1758 the reforming minister ofJoseph I of Portugal (1750–77), the
Marquis of Pombal, expelled the Jesuits from Portugal, and transported them all to Civitavecchia, as a "gift for the Pope." In 1760,
Pombal sent the papal nuncio home and recalled the Portuguese ambassador from the Vatican. The pamphlet titled the Brief Relation,
which claimed the Jesuits had created their own sovereign independent kingdom in South America and tyrannised the Native
[2] did damage to the Jesuit cause as well.
Americans, all in the interest of an insatiable ambition and avarice,
On 8 November 1760, Clement XIII issued aPapal bull Quantum ornamenti, which approved the
request of King Charles III of Spain to invoke the Immaculate Conception as the Patroness of
Spain, along with its eastern and western territories, while continuing to recognize Saint James
the Greater as co-patron.

In France, the Parlement de Paris, with its strong upper bourgeois background and Jansenist
sympathies, began its campaign to expel the Jesuits from France in the spring of 1761, and the
published excerpts from Jesuit writings, the Extrait des assertions, provided anti-Jesuit
ammunition (though, arguably, many of the statements the Extrait contained were made to look
worse than they were through judicious omission of context). Though a congregation of bishops
assembled at Paris in December 1761 recommended no action, Louis XV of France (1715–74)
promulgated a royal order permitting the Society to remain in France, with the proviso that Clement XIII's tomb inSt.
Peter's Basilica
certain essentially liberalising changes in their institution satisfy the Parlement with a French
Jesuit vicar-general who would be independent of the general in Rome. When the Parlement by
the arrêt of 2 August 1762 suppressed the Jesuits in France and imposed untenable conditions on any who remained in the country,
Clement XIII protested against this invasion of the Church's rights and annulled the arrêts.[2] Louis XV's ministers could not permit
such an abrogation of French law, and the King finally expelled the Jesuits in November 1764.

Clement XIII warmly espoused the Jesuit order in a papal bull Apostolicum pascendi, 7 January 1765, which dismissed criticisms of
the Jesuits as calumnies and praised the order's usefulness; it was largely ignored: by 1768 the Jesuits had been expelled from France,
the Two Sicilies and Parma. In Spain, they appeared to be safe, but Charles III of Spain (1759–88), aware of the drawn-out
contentions in Bourbon France, decided on a more peremptory efficiency. During the night of 2–3 April 1767, all the Jesuit houses of
Spain were suddenly surrounded, the inhabitants arrested, shipped to the ports in the clothes they were wearing and bundled onto
ships for Civitavecchia. The King's letter to Clement XIII promised that his allowance of 100 piastres each year would be withdrawn
for the whole order, should any one of them venture at any time to write anything in self-defence or in criticism of the motives for the
expulsion,[2] motives that he refused to discuss, then or in the future.

Much the same fate awaited them in the territories of the Bourbon Duke of Parma and Piacenza, advised by the liberal minister
Guillaume du Tillot. In 1768, Clement XIII issued a strong protest (monitorium) against the policy of the Parmese government. The
question of the investiture of Parma aggravated the Pope's troubles. The Bourbon Kings espoused their relative's quarrel, seized
[3]
Avignon, Benevento and Pontecorvo, and united in a peremptory demand for the total suppression of the Jesuits (January 1769).

Driven to extremes, Clement XIII consented to call a consistory to consider the step, but on the very eve of the day set for its meeting
, there appears to be no conclusive evidence.[3]
he died, not without suspicion of poison, of which, however

Ecumenism
Clement XIII was a supporter of a plan to possibly reunite the Protestant churches in the west and was the first pope to think of a
possible ecumenical reunion of the Old Catholic churches with the Catholic Church, however his efforts made little headway because
he was not ready to compromise on church doctrine or the catechism of the church. He recognised the Hanoverian monarchs as the
true kings of Great Britain after the Jacobite rising of 1745 in spite of the fact that the rival House of Stuart who claimed the British
throne were catholic and had been recognized as such by the predecessors of Clement XIII. This decision may have been taken to
hasten Catholic emancipation in Great Britain and was severely objected to by Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart who was the brother
of the then Jacobite pretender Charles Edward Stuartand himself the subsequentJacobite pretender.

Other activities
Clement XIII created 52 new cardinals in seven consistories in his pontificate.
The pope approved the cultus for several individuals: Andrew of Montereale and Vincent
Kadlubek on 18 February 1764, Angelus Agostini Mazzinghi on 7 March 1761, Antoine
Neyrot on 22 February 1767, Augustine Novello in 1759, Elizabeth Achler on 19 July 1766,
James Bertoni in 1766, Francesco Marinoni on 5 December 1764, Mattia de Nazarei on 27
July 1765, Sebastian Maggi on 15 April 1760 and Angela Merici on 30 April 1768. He
formally beatified Beatrix of Este the Elder on 19 November 1763, Bernard of Corleone on
15 May 1768 and Gregorio Barbarigo on 6 July 1761.

Clement XIII canonized four saints in his pontificate: Jerome Emiliani, Joseph Calasanz,
Joseph of Cupertino, and Serafino of Montegranaro on 16 July 1767.

Death
Clement XIII died during the night of 2 February 1769 in Rome of an apoplexy. He was laid
A portrait of Pope Clement
to rest on 8 February 1769 in the Vatican but his remains were transferred on 27 September XIII
1774 to a monument in the Vatican that had been sculpted by Antonio Canova at the request
of Senator Abbondio Rezzonico, the nephew of the late pontif
f.

From the Annual Register, for 1758: Pope Clement XIII was "the honestest man in the world; a most exemplary ecclesiastic; of the
purest morals; devout, steady, learned, diligent..."[6]

See also
Cardinals created by Clement XIII

Notes
1. http://www2.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios1737.htm#Rezzonico
2. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain: Smith,
Sydney (1908). "Pope Clement XIII" (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04032a.htm). In Herbermann, Charles.
Catholic Encyclopedia. 4. New York: Robert Appleton. Retrieved 23 June 2017.
3. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain: Chisholm,
Hugh, ed. (1911). "Clement /Clement XIII". Encyclopædia Britannica(11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 487.
4. L'Osservatore Romano(6 July 2008)
5. "Rezzonico, senior, Carlo (1693-1769)" (http://www2.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios1737.htm#Rezzonico)
. Cardinals of the
Holy Roman Church. 2015. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
6. The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politicks, and Literature, of the Year 1758 (https://books.google.co.uk/
books?id=zxrygMcR8fcC&pg=PA102&dq=%22honestest+man+in+the+world%22+intitle:register&hl=en&sa=X&redir
_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22honestest%20man%20in%20the%20world%22%20intitle%3Aregister&f=false) . London:
R. and J. Dodsley. 1759. p. 102.

External links
Monument to Clement XIII in St Peter's Basilica by Canova

Catholic Church titles

Preceded by Bishop of Padova Succeeded by
Giovanni Minotto Ottoboni 11 March 1743 – 6 July 1758 Sante Veronese
Preceded by Pope Succeeded by
Benedict XIV 6 July 1758 – 2 February 1769 Clement XIV
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Clement_XIII&oldid=821990609
"

This page was last edited on 23 January 2018, at 20:11.

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