Pope Clement XI
Pope Clement XI reigned from 1700 to 1721 and issued two rulings that cost the Church dearly in France and in China. Born Giovanni Francesco Albani at Urbino in 1649, he was a scholar of unusual quality, competent in Greek and Latin from boyhood, and served in the curia as secretary of briefs. He was ordained priest only in 1700, weeks before his election, and reportedly hesitated for days before accepting. He was elected as the War of the Spanish Succession began, and his position was impossible. He recognised the Bourbon claimant Philip V, then was forced by an Austrian army marching on Rome to recognise the Habsburg Charles instead, and satisfied neither side. The Peace of Utrecht in 1713 disposed of papal fiefs including Sicily and Sardinia without consulting him, which demonstrated how little weight the papacy now carried in European settlements. In 1713 he issued the bull Unigenitus, condemning 101 propositions drawn from a French devotional commentary by Pasquier Quesnel. It was intended to end Jansenism and instead produced sixty years of conflict in France, with bishops appealing against it to a general council and the crown enforcing it by police action. In 1704 and 1715 he condemned the Chinese Rites — the Jesuit practice of permitting Chinese converts to continue honouring Confucius and their ancestors, on the argument that these were civil rather than religious observances. The Kangxi Emperor responded by banning Christian missions, and the Chinese mission collapsed for two centuries. He was a considerable patron, funding excavations, the Vatican library's oriental manuscripts and the restoration of the Pantheon. He died in 1721.
- Lived: 1649 CE – 1721 CE
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: pope, cleric
