ALESSANDRO VIII, PAPA. — Pietro Vito Ottoboni, of a noble Venetian family, born on 22 October 1610, took degrees in both laws at Padua and, having gone to Rome, successively became referendary of the two Signatures, governor of Terni, Rieti, and Città di Castello, auditor of the Rota, cardinal on 19 February 1652, and bishop of Brescia in 1654. Having returned to Rome, he played a major role in the conclave from which Clement IX emerged elected; appreciating his practical experience in curial affairs, the latter appointed him datary. Under Innocent XI he was grand inquisitor of Rome and secretary of the Holy Office. In 1681 he transferred first to the suburbicarian see of Frascati, and then to those of Albano and Porto.
Dean of the Sacred College, on 6 October 1689 he received the tiara 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 again to the Holy See, A. was soon able to settle a long and serious dispute, recognizing his right of nomination to 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 uncompromising regarding any further extension of the royal right of regalia over bishoprics, condemning, by means of the bull Inter multiplices of 4 August 1690, published 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 toward safeguarding matters of Faith. The last partisans of Molinos, led by the chamber cleric Gabrielli, were condemned by the Holy Office to perpetual imprisonment in Perugia. On 24 August 1690 came the solemn con-
demnation of a proposition denying the necessity of the act of divine love, and of another defended by Francesco Musnier of Dijon concerning the licitness of philosophical sin, as not entailing an offense against God. On 7 December of the same year it was the turn of the Jansenists, who saw many propositions issued by professors of theology at Louvain condemned, concerning justification and Penance, the Virgin, Baptism, and the authority of the Church.
The flourishing state of the missions in China led A. to establish the bishoprics of Nanjing and Beijing, with the right of nomination reserved to the king of Portugal. On 16 October 1690 he promulgated the decrees of beatification of the Spaniards Giovanni di S. Facondo, Augustinian, Pasquale Baylon, Franciscan, Giovanni di Dio, founder of the Hospitallers, as well as Giovanni da Capistrano and Lorenzo Giustiniani.
More than the favors and honors granted to Venice, partly justified by the need to support her, together with the Habsburgs, in the bitter struggle against the Turks, it is the excessive nepotistic solicitude that casts an unfavorable light on A., all the more glaring after the illustrious example of austerity and virtue offered by his predecessor Innocent XI. He showed himself truly paternal, however, in his efforts 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, hence the motto Re frumentaria restituta placed on two coins. He further reduced the duties on meat. He restored the Pauline aqueducts and the related Janiculum fountainhead. Nor did he spare efforts to promote ecclesiastical discipline and develop the state administrations. A student of humanistic doctrines and a member of the learned circle gathered around Christina of Sweden, he secured for the Vatican Library many manuscripts and works collected by her.
He died on 1 February 1691 and was buried in the basilica of S. Pietro, where a monument by Arrigo di S. Martino commemorates him. — Vedi Tav. LXII.
Louis XIV, in Revue des questions historiques, 22 (1877), pp. 135-210; S. Freiherr von Bischofshausen, Papst A. VIII und der Wiener Hof, Stoccarda 1900; G. Hergenröther, Storia universale della Chiesa, VII, Firenze 1911, p. 36 sgs.; Pastor, XIV, II, pp. 387-412; P. Richard, s. V. in DHC, VII, coll. 244-51.