CLEMENT XI, Pope. - Giovanni Francesco Albani, b. at Urbino on 23 July 1649, was educated in Rome and was not unconnected with the circle of Queen Christina of Sweden. Appointed secretary of briefs in 1687, he was created cardinal of S. Maria in Aquiro by Alexander VIII on 10 Apr. 1690.
He was elected pontiff on 23 Nov. 1700. His pontificate was troubled, because, once the War of the Spanish Succession had broken out, each of the two opposing powers, France and the Empire with their allies, claimed to have the Pope on its side. Emperor Joseph and Philip V of Spain recalled their ambassadors from Rome, breaking off relations with the Pope; indeed the emperor had the States of the Church harassed by his militias.
The treaties of Utrecht, Rastadt and Baden (1712-14) fixed in general outline the arrangement of Europe without taking into account the rights of the Pope; indeed the new emperor Charles VI did not fail to advance new claims. Better fortunes, on the other hand, marked for Christendom the victories won in Hungary by Prince Eugene and by the Venetians off Corfu and in the Peloponnese, to which the Pontiff did not fail to contribute. Throughout the whole pontificate of C. there ran a passionate debate on Jansenist questions. It began in 1701 with the famous case of conscience: namely, whether one who professed that the respectful silence on the condemnations of Jansenism was sufficient could be absolved, without internal assent also being required of him. The Pope condemned this assertion with the bull Vineam Domini of 16 July 1705. He issued on 8 Sept. 1713 the bull Unigenitus, by which 101 propositions of the Reflections morales of Quesnel were condemned; from this arose passionate controversies in France, to the point of forming a party called that of the "Appellants" (1717), who were at once excommunicated by the new bull Pastoralis of 1718. Under the pontificate of C. the missions received a strong impulse, particularly those of the eastern Mediterranean, of Persia, of India and of China. The questions concerning the Chinese and Malabar rites (v.), which Pope C. intended to cut short with his bull of 9 March 1715, provoked long controversies and dissensions and were a cause of persecutions for the rest of that century. Under the pontificate of C. there was no lack of effective measures of government and of enlightened patronage. A special Congregation, called of the Sollievo, was instituted to carry through grain-supply measures on behalf of the destitute; granaries for the public, hospitals, colleges and hospices arose also in the provinces.
C. died on 19 March 1721, and was buried in St. Peter's.
- See Pl. CXIX.
