BENEDICT XIII, POPE. - Pierfrancesco Orsini, born at Gravina on 2 February 1649 to Ferdinando, Duke of Gravina, and Giovanna Frangipane. As a young man, he renounced his primogeniture to enter the Dominican convent in Venice, where he made his solemn profession on 13 February 1668 under the name Vincenzo Maria. He devoted himself to sacred studies with great profit and, at the age of only 23, Clement X created him Cardinal of S. Sisto (22 February 1672). In 1675 he was given the archiepiscopal see of Manfredonia. Innocent XI transferred him to Cesena (1680) and then to Benevento (1686), where the cardinal worked to revive the diocese. He was elected pope on 29 May 1724, after nearly three months of vacancy following the death of Innocent XIII (7 March). He accepted because the Master General of his Order imposed it upon him out of obedience.
During his pontificate, B., while scrupulously attending to the duties of his high office, did not neglect those liturgical functions and the administration of those Sacraments that are commonly performed by ecclesiastics of far lower rank. In 1725 he celebrated the Jubilee and held a provincial synod in eight sessions for the bishops of Italy in the Lateran. He then confirmed the bull Unigenitus of Clement XI against the Jansenists and proscribed the writings disseminated against that bull. The Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal de Noailles, finally adhered to the bull with a letter of 1728, retracting what he had written to the contrary, and following his example other bishops of the Appellant party submitted. In 1729 the Sorbonne and in 1730 the Senate of Paris accepted the bull Unigen-
coll. 163-64; Pastor, XV, 487-640. An unpublished and unknown correspondence of Cardinal V. M. Orsini is discussed in Sanuio, 2 (1929, IV), pp. 5-35; S. De Lucia, Fr. V. M. Orsini and his works, ibid., pp. 36-62; G. Cardillo, B. XIII and Jansenism. In Memorie Domenicane, 58 (1941), p. 217 ff.; 59 (1942), p. 38 ff.
Carlo Castiglioni
BENEDICT
