ALEXANDER VIII, Pope. - Pietro Vito Ottoboni, of a noble Venetian family, b. 22 Oct. 1610, took his doctorate at Padua in both laws, and, having gone to Rome, became successively referendary of the two Signatures, governor of Terni, Rieti and Città di Castello, auditor of the Rota, cardinal on 19 Feb. 1652, bishop of Brescia in 1654. Having returned to Rome, he took a large part in the conclave from which Clement IX emerged elected, who, appreciating his experience in the affairs of the curia, named him his datary. Under Innocent XI he was grand inquisitor of Rome and secretary of the Holy Office. In 1681 he passed to the suburbicarian sees first of Frascati, then of Albano and of Porto.
Dean of the Sacred College, he received the tiara on 6 Oct. 1689 from fifty-two electors chiefly concerned not to offend either France or Spain, amid the turmoil of the European coalition against Louis XIV. With the latter, weary and desirous of drawing closer to the Holy See, A. was soon able to settle a long and grave dispute, recognizing his right of nomination for the dioceses of Metz, Toul, Verdun, Arras and Perpignan, and obtaining the restitution of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, as well as the renunciation of the famous franchises. He showed himself intransigent with regard to a further extension of the royal right of regalia over bishoprics, condemning, by the bull Inter multiplices of 4 Aug. 1690, made public later on his deathbed, the four articles of the so-called liberties of the Gallican Church, which the clergy had promulgated in 1682 under pressure from the sovereign.
But the most notable work of the pontificate was that directed to safeguarding the things of the Faith. The last partisans of Molinos, headed by the cleric of the chamber Gabrielli, received from the Holy Office the sentence of perpetual imprisonment in Perugia. Dated 24 Aug. 1690 is the solemn condemnation of a proposition that denied the necessity of the act of divine love, and of the other maintained by François Musnier of Dijon concerning the lawfulness of philosophical sin, as not entailing offense toward God. On 7 Dec. of the same year it was the turn of the Jansenists, who saw many propositions struck down, issued by professors of theology at Louvain, concerning justification and Penance, the Virgin, Baptism and the authority of the Church.
The flourishing state of the missions of China led A. to establish the bishoprics of Nanking and Peking, with the right of nomination reserved to the king of Portugal. On 16 Oct. 1690 he promulgated the decrees of beatification of the Spaniards John of St. Facundus, Augustinian, Paschal Baylon, Franciscan, John of God, founder of the Hospitallers, as well as of John of Capistrano and of Lawrence Giustiniani.
More than the favors and honors granted to Venice, and in part justified by the necessity of supporting her, together with the Habsburgs, in the harsh struggle against the Turks, the excessive nepotistic solicitations cast no good light on A., all the more jarring after the illustrious example of austerity and virtue offered by his predecessor Innocent XI. Truly paternal, on the other hand, he showed himself in the effort to keep plague and famine away from the Romans. The poor and orphans received, thanks to new facilities for importation and transport, eighty thousand rubbia of grain, and hence the motto Re frumentaria restituta placed on two coins. He further reduced the taxes on meat. He restored the Pauline aqueducts and the related Gianicolo fountain. Nor did he spare efforts to increase ecclesiastical discipline and develop the state administrations. A cultivator of humanistic doctrines, a member of the erudite circle gathered around Christina of Sweden, he secured for the Vatican Library many manuscripts and works collected by her.
He died on 1 Feb. 1691 and was buried in the basilica of St. Peter, where a monument by Arrigo di S. Martino commemorates him. - See Pl. LXII.
Bibliography5 works
Louis XIV, in Revue des questions historiques, 22 (1877), pp. 135-210; S. Freiherr von Bischofshausen, Papst A. VIII und der Wiener Hof, Stuttgart 1900; G. Hergenröther, Storia universale della Chiesa, VII, Florence 1911, p. 36 ff.; Pastor, XIV, II, pp. 387-412; P. Richard, s. v. in DHC, VII, coll. 244-51.