POMBAL, de Carvalho e Mello, Sebastião José, marquis of. — B. in Lisbon on 15 May 1699, d. at Pombal on 8 May 1782. In 1739 he was sent to London as chargé d’affaires; in 1745 he became ambassador to Vienna.
Minister of War and Foreign Affairs in 1750, he soon abandoned these portfolios to take charge of the Interior, becoming in effect prime minister. King Joseph I conferred on him the title of count, then of marquis. Pombal sought to revive Portugal’s depressed economy through reforms inspired by the English example and physiocratic doctrines; he did much or attempted much to improve agriculture and promote trade and industry, but these measures lacked lasting efficacy because Pombal failed to take account of the nation’s capacities, and because he imposed them by dictatorial methods, showing no respect for the rights and liberties of others. After the work he carried out to repair the damage of the disastrous Lisbon earthquake had secured the king’s unbounded confidence, Pombal aimed to establish a regime of absolute absolutism. Two obstacles stood in the way of his plans: the power of the high aristocracy and the religious and intellectual preponderance of the Society of Jesus. Though he had hitherto professed friendship for the Jesuits, to whom he owed his rapid rise, Pombal waged merciless war upon them, unhampered by scruples in the choice of means. Exploiting the accusations circulating in Europe against the so-called Jesuit State in Paraguay, he began the campaign in 1755 with numerous individual expulsions. He attributed to Jesuit intrigues the revolt of the winegrowers of Oporto, in which they had no part. In 1757 he removed the confessors of the royal family and forbade the Jesuits access to court. Meanwhile he formulated against them all manner of charges, which at first even impressed the apostolic nuncio, though never producing evidence to support them. Benedict XIV, wishing to avoid a rupture with the king, appointed Cardinal Saldanha reformer and visitor of the Portuguese Jesuits. But this choice, instead of facilitating an agreement, favoured Pombal’s designs, for Saldanha was his kinsman and owed his elevation and substantial benefits received by his relatives to Pombal. Thus, during the vacancy of the Holy See following the pope’s death, Pombal was able to act freely, under the presumed tacit approval of the supreme ecclesiastical authority; among other measures, an ordinance was issued forbidding all Jesuits from preaching and hearing confessions. Pombal’s manoeuvres were facilitated by the fact that the new general of the Order, Lorenzo Ricci, was a man of high spiritual gifts but lacked the energy and skill needed to confront such an adversary. The new pope, Clement XIII, fearing a schism, sought to compose the dispute through negotiation and contented himself with recommending silence, patience, and prayer to the Jesuits. His attempts at pacification were rendered vain by Pombal’s audacity: in 1758, exploiting an attempt on the king’s life, he had several members of the highest nobility executed and pointed to the Jesuits as the instigators of the crime. He offered no proof of this charge, and Saldanha never sent the report requested on the matter from Rome. This was followed by the sequestration of the Society’s property and, on 5 October 1759, the expulsion of all its members. That these measures were not provoked by real or alleged crimes of the Jesuits (in which case, moreover, the guilty should have been punished without involving the innocent) but were rather intended to clear the ground for a broader campaign against the Roman Church was demonstrated by subsequent events. Not only were other ecclesiastical communities persecuted, but while the pope displayed even excessive condescension, Pombal decreed the expulsion of the nuncio Acciaioli and then of all papal subjects, forbade communication with the Curia, and prohibited the importation of goods from the Papal States. Thus he revealed his ultimate aim: to render the Portuguese Church as independent as possible from Roman hierarchies. For a decade diplomatic relations between the Papal States and Portugal remained severed. Pombal’s fortunes declined with the death of King Joseph. His enemies took vengeance by forcing him to resign and subjecting him to trial. Exiled to Pombal, he died soon after. In the apology he wrote in his final days, he defended himself against charges of embezzlement and irreligion, declaring that he had always been sincerely Catholic.
Roberto Palmarocchi
POMERIUS JULIANUS
In the nuptial pompa (pompa nuptialis) the maiden leaves her father’s house accompanied by her relatives and preceded by a escort of youths and young men; in funerals (pompa funeris) the bier was preceded by the herald (praeco) and the tibicen who played the funeral dirge, the insignia of offices held, and wax images of the ancestors; in the triumphal pompa (pompa triumphalis) the general, clad in purple and crowned with laurel, advanced in a quadriga drawn by white horses toward the Capitol; from there the solemn procession descended to the circus for games either vowed by the victor or customary at the end of the autumn military campaign; hence the affinity between the triumphal and circensian pompa.
In the circensian pompa (pompa circensis) pride of place was given to the magistrate who proceeded in a biga, wearing a purple toga, a tunica palmata, a crown on his head, and a sceptre surmounted by an eagle in his hand. The procession was opened by youths who had both parents living; it was followed by those taking part in the games, minor ministers of the cult with smoking censers, priests, images of the gods carried either in the arms or on litters (ferculae) and their primitive symbolic attributes, perhaps of a fetishistic kind, referred to with benevolent euphemism as exuviae deorum, borne on small two-wheeled carts. The circensian pompa, having left the Capitol, reached the Circus Maximus and circled its spina to be admired by the people. When the procession arrived beneath the balcony of the presiding magistrate, a sacrifice was performed, after which the games began. The fullest description of the circensian pompa is that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (VII, 70).
The ostentatious display of pagan cult characteristic of the pompa, which for Christianity was a manifestation of Satan’s pomp (omnes dii gentium daemonia), led to the baptismal rite inviting the catechumen to renounce the pompae (Tertullian, De cor., 3 “the pompae”) of Satan, comprehending in this word all the ceremonies and vanities deriving from paganism.
Pompeii — Forum Portico.
POMPEIUS, Julianus. — Priest and orator, b. in Mauretania; about the middle of the 5th century he moved to Gaul (Gennadius, De viris illustr., 96), taking up residence in Arles (Vita s. Caesarii episc. Arelatensis, 1, 9), where he worked as a rhetorician; one of his pupils was Caesarius.
He later became an abbot, esteemed by the bishops Ennodius of Pavia (*Epist.*, 2, 6) and Ruricius of Limoges (*Epist.*, 1, 17; 2, 9). His work *De animae natura* has not been preserved; likewise lost are the books *De contemptu mundi* and *De virginitus institutionis*. On the other hand, the work *De vita contemplativa* in three books has been preserved. It was wrongly attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine, but Isidore of Seville cites it as the work of G. P., with the words: *De futurae vitae contemplatione vel actuali conversatione necnon de vitiis et virtutibus*, which corresponds exactly to the subject matter of the three books of G. P.’s work. It is a kind of pastoral rule for the clergy (bishops). The author was familiar with the works of St. Augustine.