Today marks the anniversary of the election in 1740 of Pope Benedict XIV, who is rightly regarded as one of the most learned men ever to sit on the throne of St Peter. He was born in 1675 as Prospero Lambertini, to a noble family of Bologna, the second city of the Papal States. When he was 13, he was sent to Rome to pursue the typical course of ecclesiastical studies, including Latin, philosophy and theology; by the age of 19, he had obtained his doctorate in theology, and the prestigious laurea utriusque, a doctorate in both canon and civil law. In 1698, he was ordained a priest, and soon after began his career as a canon lawyer in the Roman Curia, where he would serve for over a quarter of a century. He was also the “Promotor Fidei” (popularly known as “the devil’s advocate”) for the causes of various Saints, whose job was to raise every possible objection to a canonization, so as to guarantee its credibility when every possible objection had been answered. This led him to write a massive treatise called “Doctrina de servorum dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione – the teaching on the beatification of the servants of God, and the canonization of blesseds”, still to this day considered an essential work on the subject.
In 1727, he was made bishop of Ancona in the Italian Marches, a major Adriatic port, then also part of the Papal States. The following year he was made a cardinal, and thus participated in the conclave of 1730 that saw the election of Clement XII, who transferred him to his native Bologna ten months later. During his time as archbishop, he wrote another major treatise on diocesan synods, which has been as influential as his work on canonizations.
Clement XII died in February of 1740, leading to one of the longest conclaves in history (six months), long enough for four of the fifty-five participants to die, including the initial favorite. After several different candidates had failed to reach the necessary two-thirds majority of votes, Cardinal Lambertini was proposed as a compromise candidate unlikely to offend any of the political interests that had thus far blocked all others. He is famously supposed to have clinched his own election by saying to his fellow cardinals, “If you wish to elect a Saint, choose Gotti; if you want a statesman, choose Aldrovandi; and if you want an honest man, choose me.” (This statement is also reported with the cardinal describing himself rather more colorfully; Lambertini was known all his life for the use of language not wholly befitting his clerical station.) He was elected on the 255th ballot, and took the name Benedict in honor of his predecessor-but-one, Benedict XIII, who had made him a bishop.
The popes of that era had to govern not only the Church as a whole in matters spiritual, but also rule as the sovereigns of the Papal States. On both fronts, Benedict XIV had many difficulties to confront: the papacy was in conflict with several of the Catholic states of Europe over matters pertaining to the governance of the Church; anti-clericalism and anti-Christian sentiment were on the rise, fueled by the so-called Enlightenment; and the finances of the Papal States were in very rough shape. (In regard to this last matter, he once said of Benedict XIII that “he simply had no idea how to govern.”) On all these fronts, over the course of his nearly 18-year reign, he served very well. He restored peace between the Church and the Catholic states, and achieved a tremendous amount by way of stabilizing the finances and improving the civil administration of the Papal States, thus earning the admiration and good-will of his temporal subjects. The arts and sciences flourished in Rome during his pontificates: he established two important new collections of the Vatican Museums, and another of Apostolic library.
He was well-known as a cheerful and talkative man, and respected by many non-Catholics, with whom he enjoyed very good relations. Exemplary of this is the Latin epigram composed for him by the most notorious Church-hater of the era, Voltaire:
“Lambertinus hic est, Romae decus et pater orbis, / qui mundum scriptis docuit, virtutibus ornat. ~ This is Lambertini, the glory of Rome and father of the globe, who taught the world by his writing, and adorned it with his virtues.”
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