TAMBURINI, MICHELANGELO. - Fourteenth general of the Society of Jesus, b. at Modena on 27 Sept. 1648, d. at Rome on 28 Febr. 1730.
He taught philosophy for 12 years at Bologna and theology at Mantua; then he remained for some time in the service of Cardinal Rinaldo d'Este as private theologian; afterwards he governed the Venetian province, was secretary of the general T. Gonzalez and from 1703 his vicar. On 3 Jan. 1706 he was elected general.
It may be said that under him the Order reached the zenith of its apostolic activity; the home missions, especially in the countryside, regained vigor in Italy and abroad (it suffices to mention the work of St. Francis de Girolamo at Naples, of the blessed Antonio Baldinucci in the Roman countryside, of the venerable Emm. Padial in Spain); the foreign missions, in particular that of Paraguay, were supplied with numerous and capable missionaries; he also obtained the canonization of St. Francis Borgia (1742), of St. Stanislaus Kostka and St. Aloysius Gonzaga (1726). Yet the first warning signs were not lacking, harbingers of the storm that later culminated in the suppression of the Order: in France the Jansenists' revenge for the bull Unigenitus and the destruction of Port-Royal, attributed to the Fathers; the interdict for 15 years launched upon the Fathers of Paris by Cardinal de Noailles; in Piedmont the question of the University; in Spain that of the quinquennial taxes. More than anything else, T. was preoccupied by the question of the Chinese rites (v.), for which he presented to Clement XI, on 20 Nov. 1710, 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 the part of himself and of the whole Order. At the beginning of his tenure he had already issued the prohibition against teaching 30 philosophical propositions favorable to the systems of Descartes and Leibnitz (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).
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