BENEDICT XIII, Pope. - Pierfrancesco Orsini, b. at Gravina on 2 Feb. 1649 to Ferdinando, duke of Gravina, and Giovanna Frangipane. As a youth he renounced his birthright in order to enter the Dominican convent in Venice, where he made his solemn profession on 13 Feb. 1668 under the name Vincenzo Maria. He devoted himself to sacred studies with great profit and, at only 23 years of age, Clement X created him cardinal of S. Sisto (22 Feb. 1672). In 1675 he received the archiepiscopal see of Manfredonia. Innocent XI transferred him to Cesena (1680) and then to Benevento (1686), where the cardinal worked to restore the diocese to flourishing. His election as pope followed on 29 May 1724, after nearly three months of vacancy of the pontifical see following the death of Innocent XIII (7 March). He accepted because the general of his Order imposed it on him in obedience.
During his pontificate, B., although scrupulously attending to the duties of his high office, did not neglect to attend to those liturgical functions and the administration of those Sacraments which are commonly performed by ecclesiastics of a much lower rank. In 1725 he celebrated the jubilee and held a provincial synod in eight sessions for the bishops of Italy, in the Lateran. Then he confirmed the bull Unigenitus of Clement XI against the Jansenists and proscribed the writings circulated against that bull. The archbishop of Paris, card. 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 group of appellants submitted. In 1729 the Sorbonne and in 1730 the Parliament of Paris accepted the bull Unigenitus, and the movement of the appellants gradually faded (cf. A. Zaccaria Difesa di tre sommi pontefici di Santa Chiesa: B. XIII, Benedetto XIV e Clemente XIII..., Ravenna [Venice] 1782). In the years 1727-28 B. succeeded in settling the dispute of the Holy See with the Sardinian States, coming to an agreement with Victor Amadeus II on immunities and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It was thus possible to provide for the appointment to the archiepiscopal see of Turin, which had been vacant since 1713.
In the question, agitated by theologians and canonists concerning the validity of priestly ordinations performed in the Anglican Church, B. intervened by condemning the Défense de la Dissertation of Le Courayer, aimed at showing the validity of those ordinations. Numerous canonizations took place in the years 1726-29, among others those of John Nepomucene, of Aloysius Gonzaga, of Stanislaus Kostka, of John of the Cross. With the bull Creditae nobis coelitus (9 May 1725) B. ordered the bishops to erect seminaries and created for that purpose a commission called Congregatio seminariorum. In 1727 he approved the erection of the university at Camerino, where a center of studies had long flourished. He visited his former diocese of Benevento twice, and in 1727 he stayed at Montecassino, where he consecrated (18 May) the church that had been begun in 1640. He made a total of 29 cardinalitial promotions, without a shadow of favoritism. The Romans, however, did not forgive him the blind and unlimited trust he placed, as regards affairs of State, in card. Coscia and the excessive favor accorded to the Beneventans, whom he had brought with him from Benevento. Three volumes published in 1728 at Ravenna are proof of his theological erudition. He died holily on 21 Feb. 1730.
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Carlo Castiglioni
