Pope Clement XI
Encyclopedia
Pope Clement XI born Giovanni Francesco Albani, was Pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...

 from 1700 until his death in 1721.

Early life

Albani was born in Urbino
Urbino
Urbino is a walled city in the Marche region of Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482...

, into a noble family
Albani (family)
The Albani were an aristocratic Roman family, members of which attained the highest dignities in the Roman Catholic Church, one, Clement XI, having been Pope. They were Albanians who originally moved to Urbino from the region of Malësi e Madhe in Albania...

 that had established itself there from northern Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

 in the 15th century and were originally soldiers of Scanderbeg against the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

. During his reign as a Pope the famous Illyricum Sacrum was commissioned, and today it is one of the main sources of the field of Albanology
Albanology
Albanology is the science that studies Albanian language and culture.The father of Albanology is often considered to be the Austrian Norbert Jokl, while the Croat Milan Šufflay and the Hungarian Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás are also among its famous founders.Among modern important Albanologists...

, with over 5000 pages divided in several volumes written by Daniele Farlati
Daniele Farlati
Daniele Farlati was an ecclesiastical historian.Farlati was born in San Daniele del Friuli in the present Italian province of Udine. After having studied in Gorizia he entered, in 1707, the Society of Jesus in Bologna...

 and Dom. Coletti.

He was governor of Rieti
Rieti
Rieti is a city and comune in Lazio, central Italy, with a population of c. 47,700. It is the capital of province of Rieti.The town centre rests on a small hilltop, commanding a wide plain at the southern edge of an ancient lake. The area is now the fertile basin of the Velino River...

 and Urbino, and was created Cardinal-Deacon of S. Maria in Aquiro by Pope Alexander VIII
Pope Alexander VIII
Pope Alexander VIII , born Pietro Vito Ottoboni, was Pope from 1689 to 1691.-Early life:Pietro Ottoboni was born of a noble Venetian family, and was the son of Marco Ottoboni, chancellor of the Republic of Venice...

. He succeeded as Pope on November 23, 1700.

Reign

Soon after his accession, the War of Spanish Succession broke out.

Despite initially holding an ambiguous neutrality, Clement was later forced to name Charles, Archduke of Austria
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles VI was the penultimate Habsburg sovereign of the Habsburg Empire. He succeeded his elder brother, Joseph I, as Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia , Hungary and Croatia , Archduke of Austria, etc., in 1711...

, as King of Spain, since the imperial army had conquered much of northern Italy and was threatening Rome itself (January 1709).

By the Treaty of Utrecht
Treaty of Utrecht
The Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, comprises a series of individual peace treaties, rather than a single document, signed by the belligerents in the War of Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht in March and April 1713...

 that concluded the War, the Papal States lost their suzerainty over the Farnese Duchy of Parma and Piacenza in favour of Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, and lost Comacchio
Comacchio
Comacchio is a town and comune of Emilia Romagna, Italy, in the province of Ferrara, 48 km from the provincial capital Ferrara.-Geography:...

 as well. It was a blow from which the declining prestige of the Papal States would never recover.

In 1713 the bull
Papal bull
A Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end in order to authenticate it....

 Unigenitus
Unigenitus
Unigenitus , an apostolic constitution in the form of a papal bull promulgated by Pope Clement XI in 1713, opened the final phase of the Jansenist controversy in France...

was published. The bull greatly disturbed the peace of the Gallican
Gallican Church
The Gallican Church was the Catholic Church in France from the time of the Declaration of the Clergy of France to that of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy during the French Revolution....

 (French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

) church. It condemned 101 propositions from the works of Quesnel
Pasquier Quesnel
Pasquier Quesnel was a French Jansenist theologian.He was born in Paris, and, after graduating from the Sorbonne with distinction in 1653, he joined the French Oratory in 1657...

 as heretical
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...

 and as identical with propositions already condemned in the writings of Jansen
Cornelius Jansen
Corneille Janssens, commonly known by the Latinized name Cornelius Jansen or Jansenius, was Catholic bishop of Ypres and the father of a theological movement known as Jansenism.-Biography:...

.

The resistance of many French ecclesiastics and the refusal of the French parlement
Parlement
Parlements were regional legislative bodies in Ancien Régime France.The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and...

s
to register the bull led to controversies extending through the greater part of the 18th century. Because the local governments did not officially receive the bull, it was not, technically, in force in those areas – an example of the interference of states in religious affairs common before the 20th century.

During his time as pope, Clement XI made a concerted effort to acquire Christian manuscripts in Syriac from Egypt and other places in the Middle East, greatly expanding the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana's collection of Syriac works.

Chinese Rites controversies

Another important decision of Clement XI was in regard to the Chinese Rites controversy
Chinese Rites controversy
The Chinese Rites controversy was a dispute within the Catholic Church from the 1630s to the early 18th century about whether Chinese folk religion rites and offerings to the emperor constituted idolatry...

: the Jesuit missionaries were forbidden to take part in honors paid to Confucius
Confucius
Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....

 or the ancestors of the Emperors of China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, which Clement XI identified as "idolatrous and barbaric", and to accommodate Christian language to pagan ideas under plea of conciliating the heathen.

Clement XI died at Rome in 1721 and was buried in the pavement of St. Peter's Basilica
St. Peter's Basilica
The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as ' and commonly known as Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world...

.

Construction activity and patronage

Pope Clement shunned nepotism
Nepotism
Nepotism is favoritism granted to relatives regardless of merit. The word nepotism is from the Latin word nepos, nepotis , from which modern Romanian nepot and Italian nipote, "nephew" or "grandchild" are also descended....

. His nephew Annibale
Annibale Albani
Annibale Albani was an Italian Cardinal.Albani was born in Urbino, to Albanian parents. A cousin of Pope Clement XI, he became Cardinal Bishop of Sabina ....

 was appointed a cardinal, but only through personal merit.

As a builder, Clement had a famous sundial
Sundial
A sundial is a device that measures time by the position of the Sun. In common designs such as the horizontal sundial, the sun casts a shadow from its style onto a surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day. The style is the time-telling edge of the gnomon, often a thin rod or a...

 added in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri
Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri
The Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs is a titular basilica church in Rome, built inside the frigidarium of the Baths of Diocletian. The Cardinal priest of the is William Henry Keeler.- The basilica :...

 and had an obelisk erected in the Piazza del Pantheon and a river port built on the Tiber River.

He established a committee, overseen by his favourite artists, Carlo Maratta
Carlo Maratta
Carlo Maratta or Maratti was an Italian painter, active mostly in Rome, and known principally for his classicizing paintings executed in a Late Baroque Classical manner. Although he is part of the classical tradition stemming from Raphael, he was not exempt from the influence of Baroque painting...

 and Carlo Fontana
Carlo Fontana
Carlo Fontana was an Italian architect, who was in part responsible for the classicizing direction taken by Late Baroque Roman architecture.-Biography:...

, to commission statuary of the apostles to complete the decoration of San Giovanni in Laterano. He also founded a painting and sculpting academy in the Campidoglio.

He also enriched the Vatican library
Vatican Library
The Vatican Library is the library of the Holy See, currently located in Vatican City. It is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. Formally established in 1475, though in fact much older, it has 75,000 codices from...

 with numerous Oriental codices and patronaged the first archaeological excavations in the Roman catacombs. In his native Urbino he restored numerous edifices and founded a public library.
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