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 in Bologna and theology in Mantua for twelve years; thereafter he remained for some time in the service of Cardinal Rinaldo d’Este as his private theologian; he then governed the Venetian province, became secretary to Superior General T. Gonzalez, and from 1703 served as his vicar. On 3 January 1706 he was elected superior general.
It may be said that under him the Order reached the peak of its apostolic activity; the internal missions, especially in rural areas, regained their vigor in Italy and abroad (it is enough to mention the work of St. Francesco di Girolamo in Naples; of Bl. Antonio Baldinucci in the Roman countryside; and of Ven. Emm. Padial in Spain); the foreign missions, particularly that of Paraguay, were supplied with numerous and able missionaries; moreover, he obtained the canonization of St. Francesco Borgia (1742), and of St. Stanislaus Kostka and St. Luigi Gonzaga (1726). Yet the first signs heralding the storm that would later culminate in the suppression of the Order were not lacking: in France, the Jansenists’ revenge for the bull Unigenitus and the destruction of Port-Royal, attributed to the Fathers; the interdict imposed for fifteen years on the Fathers of Paris by Cardinal de Noailles; in Piedmont, the university question; in Spain, that of the quinquennial taxes. Above all, T. was concerned by Chinese rites (v.), for which, on 20 November 1710, he presented Clement XI with 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 on that of the entire Order. At the beginning of his tenure he had already issued a prohibition against teaching thirty philosophical propositions favorable 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. Pachtler, Monumenta Germaniae paedagogica, IX, Berlin 1890, pp. 122–25).