CLEMENT XIII, pope. – Carlo Rezzonico, born in Venice on 7 March 1693 into a family originally from Como and recently enrolled in the Golden Book (1687). He studied at the Jesuit college in Bologna. He earned degrees in theology and canon law at the University of Padua. Two years later (1714), he entered the Academy of Nobles in Rome. After ordination, he was sent by Clement XI as governor to Rieti and then to Fano. Recalled to Rome in 1725, he became auditor of the Sacred Roman Rota for Venice (Decisiones S. Rotae Romanae coram R. P. D. Carolo Rezzonico, 3 vols., Rome 1759). Clement XII created him cardinal deacon of S. Nicolò in Carcere on 20 December 1737, and Benedict XIV appointed him to succeed Cardinal Ottoboni as bishop of Padua (21 March 1743), a see which Rezzonico honored with distinguished works, such as the diocesan synod (1746) and the rebuilding of the seminary (Il Seminario di Padova, Padua 1911, pp. 227–31), as well as with apostolic zeal, inexhaustible charity, and a life of holiness. Indeed, the people of Padua called him “the saint.” When the cardinals assembled in conclave twelve days after the death of Benedict XIV (3 May 1758), after the candidacies of Archinto, Cavalchini, and Passionei had fallen, they agreed on Rezzonico, who took the name C. XIII. He was by nature gentle and generous, quick-witted and persevering, and indefatigable in his labors, as judged by his contemporary Cordara. Yet he lacked breadth of vision and foresight regarding his times. He tolerated no compromise or accommodation of any kind, and his policy thus stood in perfect antithesis to that of his predecessor. Cardinal Luigi Torrigiani, who succeeded Cardinal Archinto (October 1758) as Secretary of State, became the arbiter of this policy; he was a resolute and inflexible man and a great friend of the Jesuits. The Seven Years’ War was then raging in Europe. Upon his elevation to the papacy, C. exhorted the princes most earnestly to make peace.
In 1763–64, a severe famine struck southern Italy and Lazio, and people flocked to Rome. C. welcomed and fed daily, for many months, six thousand foreigners and eight thousand subjects. This did not prevent him from undertaking and continuing great public works. Though he could not realize his cherished plan to drain the Pontine marshes, he promoted the arts in Rome (under his pontificate the Trevi Fountain was completed). He acquired valuable manuscripts for the Vatican Library on several occasions and gave it a very strict regulation (August 1761). He favored the arts and artists, especially Raffaele Menga and Giovanni Battista Piranesi. He entrusted the office of antiquities commissioner to Winckelmann. He also protected scholarship: he praised Daniele Farlati’s Illyricum sacrum, enabled the publication of Pier Luigi Galletti’s Inscriptiones Romanae infimi aevi (3 vols., Rome 1760), and took a firm and vigilant stance against the Enlightenment movement: he condemned Helvétius’s De l’esprit, Rousseau’s Émile, and the Encyclopédie of D’Alembert and Diderot (3 September 1759). With an encyclical he pointed out to the bishops the danger of anti-Christian literature and urged them to combat it (25 November 1766). When, under the pseudonym Justinus Febronius, Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim (1701–90), auxiliary bishop of Trier, published De statu Ecclesiae et legitima potestate Romani pontificis (1763), a work highly injurious to the pope’s primacy of jurisdiction, it was placed on the Index (27 February 1764). C. saw a source of salvation in devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose feast he instituted in 1765. He canonized Joseph Calasanz, Joseph of Cupertino, Jerome Miani, Jane Frances de Chantal, and John Cantius; he also proclaimed many others blessed, including his relative and predecessor in the see of Padua, Gregory Barbarigo (20 September 1761).
The Bourbon courts’ campaign against the Jesuits made C.’s pontificate even more difficult. It began in Portugal, where the Marquis of Pombal, blaming the Jesuits for the attempted assassination of King Joseph I (3 September 1758), imprisoned some and deported others to Civitavecchia. C. protested against this arbitrary measure. Pombal expelled the papal nuncio (4 June 1760) and severed relations with the Holy See (7 July 1760). France followed, where the refusal of the Society to compensate for the damages arising from the bankruptcy of Father Lavallette gave the Parliament, incited by Minister Choiseul and Madame de Pompadour, occasion to decree the Jesuits’ expulsion (1 April 1762). In vain did C. implore the king to prevent this injustice, and he issued the constitution Apostolicum pascendi munus in praise of the Society (7 January 1765). Spain was not to be outdone. A sudden and secret order expelled the Jesuits in April 1767. Soon afterward, the minister Tanucci, who governed the kingdom of Naples in the name of the young Ferdinand IV, declared the Society suppressed in the Mezzogiorno (31 October). The Pope lodged fresh and sharper protests. When, moreover, the Duke of Parma’s minister, Du Tillot, expelled the Jesuits from the duchy—a papal fief—C. reacted vigorously with the monitory of 30 January 1768, which annulled the measures taken in the duchy against the Holy See and excommunicated their authors. The Bourbon courts, united in the “Family Compact,” made a great stir over this. France occupied Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, Naples occupied Pontecorvo and Benevento, and Spain presented harsh demands. In January 1769, the ambassadors of France, Spain, and Naples formally demanded the suppression of the Society. C. declared to intimates that he would sooner let them cut off his hands than subscribe to its abolition. He convened a special consistory of cardinals on 3 February to discuss Jesuit affairs, but he could not hold the meeting, for an apoplectic stroke brought to an end his slow martyrdom (2 February 1769). He was buried in St. Peter’s, where his family erected to him a tomb, a masterpiece by Canova.