and actually led to the adoption by the German diet in 1338 of several rules and resolutions, framed in a spirit of direct hostility to the holy see. Again, the overtures made to him more than once for the union of the Greek and Latin churches, met, to say the least, with a chilling and evasive reception. The first of these attempts was made in 1335, when the Emperor Andronicus caused the pope to be informed that he was desirous to facilitate the re-union of the churches, and to this end proposed that a conference of theologians should be held at Naples as the most central spot that could be chosen. The pope returned an apparently favourable reply, but insisted, to save the dignity of the holy see, that the conference should be held at Avignon. This caused the negotiation to be broken off. Again, in 1339, the celebrated Abbot Barlaam, the real reviver of Greek literature and learning in the West, came to Avignon, charged with a second embassy from Andronicus. The very interesting and suggestive arguments which he made use of to induce the pope to favour the scheme of union, may be read in Gibbon, and at greater length in Fleury. He skilfully showed that what kept the Greek and Latin churches asunder, was in fact not so much difference of doctrine, as soreness and alienation of feeling; and he argued, that if the Latins, by sending effectual aid to the Greek empire against the Turks, were to efface in the minds of the Greeks the memory of past injuries, the chief difficulty would have been removed in the way of ecclesiastical union. The opportunity was a rare and grand one; and by an Innocent III. or a Pius V. would, doubtless, have been eagerly grasped, but Benedict XII. saw or fancied endless difficulties; and instead of earnestly endeavouring to unite Christendom against the common enemy, he met the representations of Barlaam by counter proposals, which, as a matter of course, led to further negotiations and loss of time, so that nothing was done. On the other hand, he seems to have administered the internal affairs of the church with vigour and uprightness. At the very commencement of his pontificate he took active stops to repress simony, non-residence, and other clerical irregularities. He caused the state of the principal religious orders to be carefully inquired into, and where relaxation or abuse had crept in, he instituted reforms. In the year 1339 he instituted a university at Verona. When, in 1338, the great khan of Tartary wrote to the pope, whom he addressed as "the lord of the christians in France, beyond the seven seas where the sun sets;" and after asking for his "benediction and holy prayers," recommended to his good offices the christians in his dominions, Benedict not only returned a warm and friendly reply, commending the good dispositions of the khan, and urging him to maintain the liberty of christian worship in his dominions, but also took the opportunity of sending four Franciscan missionaries to the Alan and Tartar christians. He died at Avignon in 1342, the year after Petrarch had received a laurel crown on the capitol at Rome. Few characters in history have been more diversely drawn than that of Benedict XII. Out of eight biographies preserved in Baluze, six are favourable, one, indeed, almost making him out a saint; and two load his memory with various degrees of infamy. This may be attributed partly to national prejudices, which would lead French writers to extol, and Italian writers to decry, a French pope who fixed the papacy on the banks of the Rhone,—a banishment only comparable in the eyes of the Italians to the "exile of Babylon;"—partly to the rancour of some of the monks of the religious orders, which he, perhaps in a too hard and captious spirit, reformed.
Benedict XIII., Cardinal Vincenzo Maria Orsino, archbishop of Benevento, a Roman by birth, was unanimously elected pope in the conclave which sat after the death of Innocent XIII. in 1724. He accepted the dignity with reluctance, nor even, according to Muratori, until the general of his order, the Dominicans, had constrained him to do so on his vow of obedience. He took the name of Benedict, out of veneration for the memory of Benedict XI. He was a man of deep humility and fervent piety, simple in his manners and style of living, and averse to pomp and display. In the great Jansenist controversy, which, during his pontificate, was raging in France and Holland, Benedict took a firm and consistent part. The opposers of the bull Unigenitus, by which the peculiar Jansenist doctrines were condemned, had been greatly encouraged by the example of Cardinal de Noailles, archbishop of Paris, who had long delayed to signify his acceptance of it. Moved, however, by the letter of the pope, assuring him that the doctrine contained in the bull was in no respect contrary to that of St. Augustine, and by the opinion which he had of the writer's sanctity, Noailles, in 1728, accepted the bull. In the same year the pope issued a brief condemning the work of Courayer, a canon of St. Genevieve at Paris, on the validity of Anglican orders. A similar brief had been issued by him some years before against the Adeisidæmon, one of the deistical writings of Toland. A great number of canonizations and beatifications were proceeded with by this pope. As a temporal sovereign, Benedict was not called upon to play an important part. In 1725 the emperor restored Comacchio to the holy see, but in 1727 he resolved to grant the duchies of Parma and Piacenza, which for two hundred years had acknowledged the sovereignty of the holy see, as imperial fiefs to the Infant Don Carlos, nephew of the reigning duke. The pope resisted; and the Duke Antonio Farnese, pressed by each of the contending parties to take from him the investiture of the duchies, refused to take it from either. The exiled son of James II. was at this time living in Rome, and the pope treated him and the princess his wife with marked kindness and liberality. In 1728 occurred a serious rupture with the king of Portugal, on the occasion of the recall of Bichi—the apostolic nuncio, to whom the pope had refused to give a cardinal's hat at the king's desire—from the court at Lisbon. The Portuguese ambassador and all Portuguese subjects were ordered by the king to depart from the Roman states; the nunciatura at Lisbon was closed, and the dataria compelled to suspend its functions. This pope was a bad financier, and the fiscal embarrassments in which he found the papal treasury involved, were rather aggravated than diminished during his pontificate. He is stated to have been deficient in statesmanlike qualities, and particularly to have shown a want of discernment in the choice of his ministers. He died in February, 1730.
Benedict XIII., antipope. See Benoit XIII.
Benedict XIV. (Cardinal Prospero Lambertini of Bologna) was elected unanimously on the 16th August, 1740, at the close of the protracted sitting of the conclave which followed the death of Clement XII. The French and Spanish cardinals had laboured to procure the election of Cardinal Aldrovandi; other names had also been proposed, and met with more or less of support; and it was not till six months had elapsed in constant negotiation and intrigue, that the whole sacred college suddenly agreed to the election of the able, pious, and plain-spoken archbishop of Bologna. Sprung from an ancient and noble family of Bologna, Lambertini had filled various important posts in the church, had been made successively bishop of Ancona, archbishop of Theodosia in partibus, and archbishop of Bologna, and nominated cardinal by Benedict XIII. in 1728. He had already become known as an author, and as a learned canonist, by his works, "De servorum Dei Beatificatione et de sanctorum Canonizatione," and by treatises relating to festivals and church discipline. He at once applied himself vigorously to the task of government, selecting as his ministers the Cardinals Gonzaga, Aldrovandi, Querini, and Passionei, and Mgr. Livizzani. As chief pastor of the catholic church, the great merit of Benedict XIV. was, that, during a long pontificate of eighteen years, his mingled firmness, moderation, wisdom, and piety, discriminating between the essential and the accidental, and understanding the true tendency and temper of the times, enabled him, while giving up much of temporal emolument and ancient privilege that former pontiffs had contended for, to heal many old divisions, to preserve in the main the peace of the church unbroken, and to retard at least, although he could not prevent, those revolutionary convulsions which, in the general decline of faith and piety, were already impending over the catholic nations of Europe. He concluded concordats with the kings of Sardinia and Naples, as his predecessors had done with those of Spain and Portugal, for the settlement of various matters in dispute. Under the concordat with Naples the number of holidays was abridged, restrictions placed on the ordination of priests, and the patronage of the smaller benefices given up. But in the case of this last concession, a certain number of benefices were reserved, to enable the pope to promote any deserving ecclesiastics. Benedict was firm in his support of the bull Unigenitus, and addressed a brief to the bishops of France, counselling them to refuse the sacraments to those who would not accept it. This was one of the causes which led to the protracted quarrel between the clergy and the French parliaments under Louis XV. In 1742 he promulgated a bull against all who should disobey the former decisions of the holy see respecting certain Chinese rites, the observance of which by their converts had been sanctioned by
