PASSIONEI, DOMENICO. - Cardinal, b. at Fossombrone on 2 December 1682, d. at Camaldoli (Frascati) on 5 July 1761. He attended the Clementine College of the Somaschi in Rome, then devoted himself to the study of dogmatics and ecclesiastical history under the direction of the Theatine G. M. Tommasi, through whom he became an upholder of the strictest Augustinianism and of moral rigorism. An anti-Molinist and anti-probabilist theological orientation lent itself to a secret sympathy for the theology and morality of the Jansenists. Contributing to this in P. were his friendship with cardinals Noris and Ferrari and with Msgr. Fontanini, who put him in contact with French cultural circles, among them the Maurists. Eclectic, he let no occasion pass to approach the learned men and literary figures of the time, not excluding Montesquieu and Voltaire, assimilating sympathies and antipathies whose intimate reasons for resentment — now lay and Enlightenment-inspired, now Gallican and Jansenist — against the Church his not profound theological formation could not elude.
His two-year stay in Paris and four-year stay in Holland, from 1706 to 1713, on assignments from the Holy See, allowed him to come to know the religious milieu of Paris, Amsterdam and Deventer, and his ambition offered an easy hold to the rebels, many of whom were exiles in Holland. These and his other relations with the Church of Utrecht (v.) influenced his formation. For the various services rendered to the Holy See, as commissioner for the preliminaries of the Peace of Utrecht (1712) and as the Pope's representative in the negotiations between the Emperor and France first and in the alliance between Switzerland and France afterward, after a brief period as secretary of Propaganda, he was sent in 1721 by Innocent XIII as nuncio in Switzerland, from there in 1730 by Clement XII he was transferred to Vienna, and finally created cardinal on 23 June 1738 and appointed secretary of the Briefs, an office he held until his death. In the Palazzo della Consulta on the Quirinal, where he resided, he gathered his celebrated Library. He had another, unofficial residence on the land of the Camaldolese Hermits near Frascati, famous for its luxurious and artistic furnishings, visited by popes and princes, called by himself an "hermitage," and in which he used to gather friends for rest and discussion. There assembled, under the names of fra' Paolo, fra' Giovanni, fra' Antonio and the like, Bottari, Foggini, Niccolini, Martini, Orsi, etc., under the direction of the prior, that is, of P. himself, who sat beneath the portrait of Arnauld with Pascal's Lettres provinciales always within reach. This constant and often violent anti-Jesuit attitude was added to an irresponsible criticism of the Church and the popes and to an inactivity in his pastoral office. Averse to the Congregations and to every curial commitment, he caused continual trouble to the Holy See not only through his imprudent conduct, but above all through his familiarity with libertine writers and the protection he lent to the spirit spread by the Encyclopédie. His conduct thus favored equally the suppression of the Society of Jesus and the development of Jansenism in Rome, much more than the hoped-for return to the Church's primitive practice and to its sacramental and disciplinary rigorism. The rich correspondence, the manuscripts of which few remain, testify in P. to a superficial encyclopedist, ambitious, intriguing and ambiguous. It is to this temperament of his that his death was due. Having condemned, despite his opposition, the Catechism of Mesenguy, of whose translation he was responsible, he himself was to have signed the decree. In order not to do so he withdrew to Camaldoli. Clement XIII sent him the brief with the order to sign it or resign. P. signed, but his irritation was such that, struck by apoplectic paralysis, he died twenty days later.
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