TAMBURINI, MICHELANGELO. — Fourteenth Superior General of the Society of Jesus, born in Modena on 27 September 1648, died in Rome on 28 February 1730.
He taught philosophy for twelve years in Bologna and theology in Mantua; then he served for a time as private theologian to Cardinal Rinaldo d’Este; afterwards he governed the Venetian province, became secretary to the General T. Gonzalez and, from 1703, his vicar. On 3 January 1706 he was elected General.
One may say that under him the Order reached the zenith of its apostolic activity. Domestic missions, especially in the countryside, regained vigour in Italy and abroad (it suffices to mention the work of St Francis de Geronimo in Naples, of Blessed Anthony Baldinucci in the Roman countryside, and of the Venerable Emmanuel Padial in Spain); foreign missions, particularly that in Paraguay, were supplied with numerous and effective missionaries. He also obtained the canonization of St Francis Borgia (1742), of St Stanislaus Kostka and St Aloysius Gonzaga (1726). Yet the first portents of the storm that later led to the suppression of the Order were already appearing: in France the Jansenists’ revenge for the bull Unigenitus and the destruction of Port-Royal, attributed to the Fathers; the fifteen-year interdict imposed on the Paris Fathers by Cardinal de Noailles; in Piedmont the question of the university; in Spain that of the quinquennial taxes. Most of all, Tamburini was concerned by the question of the Chinese Rites (v.), for which on 20 November 1710 he presented to Clement XI a solemn declaration (published in *Juris pontificii de propaganda fide*, part 1, vol. II [Rome 1889], pp. 223–24) of unconditional submission and faithful observance on his part and that of the entire Order. At the beginning of his office he had already issued a prohibition against teaching thirty philosophical propositions favourable to the systems of Descartes and Leibniz (cf. C. de Rochemonteix, *Le collège Henry IV à la Flèche*, IV, Le Mans 1889, pp. 89–93; M. Pachter, *Monumenta Germaniae paedagogica*, IX, Berlin 1890, pp. 122–25).
