Innocent XI.

Innocent XI, created pope the 21st of September 1676, was of Como in Lombardy, and called Benedict Odescalchi. His first profession was that of a soldier. He left it to devote himself to the ecclesiastical state, and went to study at Naples; where he received his doctor’s degree, after which he retired to Rome, in the pontificate of Urban VⅢ, who made him first apostolical secretary. He discharged so well the duties of that place, that he was made president of the chamber, and afterwards apostolical commissary, and governor of Marca di Roma. He obtained a cardinal’s cap, the 6th of March 1645, and the legation of Ferrara some time after, and after that the bishoprick of Novora. The French give out that his liberality and courtliness procured him the cardinalship, by the interest of Donna Olympia. See the Mercure Galant; in which you will find that our Benedict Odescalchi, the son of a rich banker of Como, played with Donna Olympia, and lost his money on purpose, in complaisance to this lady. This puts me in mind of a passage in the Menagiana: “Pope Innocent XI was the son of a banker; he was elected on St Matthew’s day. Pasquin said, invenerunt hominem sedentum in telonio.”

The following words are also to be found in a little book printed at Avignon for John Bramereau in the year 1652, with this title: La juste balance des Cardinaux vivans. “After the death of Urban VIII Odescalchi made his court to Donna Olympia, niece to pope Innocent X, and having treated her several times, she began zealously to espouse his interest; and especially for a thing, which this prelate did, that is worthy to be taken notice of. Going to see her in the beginning of the pontificate of her uncle Innocent X, it happened that a goldsmith came to shew her a noble and rich chest of silver drawers, which he had to sell. Donna Olympia having taken a view of it in the presence of Odescalchi, and many lords, after observing in their hearing, that it was a noble piece of plate, but that being a poor widow, she could not lay out so much money, retired into her chamber. Immediately Odescalchi called the goldsmith, asked for the price of the chest, and bargained with him for 8000 crowns; after which without saying any more, he ordered it to be presented in his name to Donna Olympia, who seeing such a present, was perfectly astonished at so extraordinary a generosity. Upon this she went to the pope, and begged the office of clerk of the chamber, as a pure gift to this prelate, and afterwards a cardinal’s cap, which he obtained likewise by the mediation of cardinal Palotta.”

They cannot however deny that Innocent appeared very remote from a voluptuous pope, but was of rigid morality, and looked upon as a devout man. He was much more favourable to the Jansenists than his predecessors had been; which was the reason why the Jansenists more zealously adhered to the cause of the popes, than they had done before. He offended abundance of people by the suppression of an office of the immaculate conception, and also by that of several indulgences. There was nobody in

France, besides the Jansenists, that was edified with this; they dispersed those two decrees, and added some notes to them. I do not believe that every body approved his forbidding to honour the name and bones of Anthony Cala. A veneration had been a long time paid to this man in the kingdom of Naples, on account of his having been a holy hermit: but Innocent XI, in 1680, commanded all this worship to be abolished, and Antony Cala’s bones to be carried into the common church-yard, to be there mixed with others, and never to be taken up again. He enjoined also that his images, his habits, and all his other relics, should be removed from all consecrated places. Innocent expressed so inflexible a stiffness in his quarrel with France, that he has convinced the world, that in point of revenge, there are no men comparable to those who pretend to be rigid moralists. It is thought that a voluptuous pope who could have sacrificed his passions to political interests would have been more useful to the Catholic religion. The court of France under Lewis XIV, and the court of Rome under Innocent XI, were actuated with the same spirit of haughtiness and inflexibility, whereby they afforded all Europe instances of that spirit for a long time. They strove on both sides to carry revenge as far as ever they could; but at last the world was forced to yield to the church. The pope has shewn that it is not for nothing that he calls himself the vicegerent of God on earth; of God I say, who reserves vengeance to himself, and who has declared that it is he to whom it belongs, and that he will pay it. The pope, as the vicegerent of the God of vengeance, has admirably maintained the rights of his deputation. I will not adopt the thoughts of those satirical wits, who pretend that in point of revenge, the laity are novices in comparison of the clergy; but we have scarcely seen any quarrels between the church and the world, in which the popes have not at last had the better in point of revenge: they are the vicegerents of God, who has reserved vengeance to himself, and that is saying all. If I well remember, the protection that was granted by Innocent XI to some bishops of France, persecuted for not consenting to the extension of the Regale, was the first step that provoked the court of France; because the briefs of Innocent XI in favour of those bishops were expressed in very strong and vigorous terms. This haughtiness put the court of France upon the most effectual ways to vex him. The clergy declared their opinion about the authority of the church, and formed four propositions thereupon, which reduced the power of the pope to such bounds as were very odious to the court of Rome. This was not at the bottom a new doctrine; the clergy decided nothing but what was agreeable to the maxims of the Gallican church, and what the Sorbonne had taught a hundred times; so that one might have thought that another pope would not have taken exceptions at it, and that Innocent XI would perhaps dissemble his resentment: but to put him under a necessity of confessing that he had received a very great affront, the decisions of the clergy were proposed by royal authority, as a doctrine that no body was allowed to oppose, and which was to be maintained by all those who would take their licences in divinity and the civil-law, and be advanced to a doctor’s degree. They studied all the formalities that might give the greatest lustre to the king’s declarations upon this affair. These doctrines were maintained by the rector of the university of Paris, in a disputation wherein the archbishop of Paris presided, and in which the respondent was invested with all the marks of his rectorship, that it might appear that it was the whole body of the university, represented by their head, that maintained these decisions. The thesis was posted upon the door of the nuncio’s house, notwithstanding the oppositions he threatened to make against it. The pope expressed his resentment against the clergy; he answered harshly the letter he had received from them, and would never grant his bulls to those who assisted at the assembly of 1682. He abolished the franchises of the ambassador of France, like those of others, and would never receive the marquis de Lavardin, who was sent ambassador to him. France did then a very remarkable thing, this ambassador entered Rome almost by main force, and having taken possession of his quarters, he set a guard about it, as if it had been a fortified town. The pope, without being astonished, revenged himself by a surprising blow; he cast an interdict upon the church of St Louis, because the marquis de Lavardin had been admitted into it, and excommunicated this ambassador, and obstinately refused to acknowledge him.

Things were at this pass, when his most Christian Majesty, perceiving that the continuation of these differences would be prejudicial to him, secretly dispatched a trusty man to whom he gave a letter of his own writing as a credential to his holiness. This man was to discover to the pope the most secret intentions of the king; but the pope would neither receive the letter, nor give him any audience. Hereupon the king wrote a letter to cardinal d'Estrée, which was communicated to the cardinals. He complained in it of the pope’s conduct, and showed in particular the prejudice that Europe and the church might suffer, from what the pope had already done against cardinal Furstenberg. He ascribed to this partiality the intrigues that were forming against king James, in favour of the protestant religion, &c. This letter, dispersed in Rome, was perhaps a new motive which induced the pope to countenance more and more prince Clement of Bavaria, to the prejudice of cardinal Furstenberg. Now by the exclusion of this cardinal, he revenged himself a hundred-fold for all the affronts he had received. He

deprived the king of France of being the arbitrator of peace and war, and involved him necessarily in a war with almost all Europe. He quickly saw the effect of this conduct; and if he lived not long after so terrible a revenge, he lived long enough to have the satisfaction of seeing France attacked by so many enemies, that according to the general conjectures, she was to sink the very first campaign. Tell me now whether the church did not obtain the victory over the world, in a long dispute, where both parties contended in point of revenge. If Alexander the Great had been a Catholic, he would have had much ado to draw out of the pope’s mouth what he did from the priestess of Delphi, “My son, thou art invincible.”

Those who do not love this pope say, that he was well enough acquainted with the general affairs to know that, in the state they were in when cardinal Furstenberg sued for the electorate of Cologne, he might have saved the king of England, and enabled France to execute all her projects; for with the assistance of such a cardinal, who would have succeeded to all that his predecessor possessed, she would have tied the arms of the princes of Germany that were ill affected to her. She experienced it in the year 1684, when she desired a truce. Now it is certain that the victories of this crown would have extended the catholic religion, and strangely weakened the protestant—whence comes it then that the pope was so contrary to that cardinal? It is, say they, because he hated the king of France, and chose rather to renounce the advantages of the Catholic religion, than the pleasure of crossing his enemy, or the sweetness of revenge. These same persons add, that he knew very well there was a league forming, of which the Protestants would be the chief directors, and which might be able in its turn to oppress the catholic religion almost all over Europe; and that the most effectual means to prevent this league, was to put the whole succession of the late

elector of Cologne into the hands of a cardinal, who would never join with heretical princes. Why then was Innocent XI so contrary to the interest of this cardinal? Because, say they, he was overjoyed to expose the French monarchy to the greatest dangers: and provided he could revenge himself of the court of France, he cared but little for the losses of the popedom. This is what is said by his enemies; but it is not too much to be relied on; their passion ought to make their conjectures suspected. It is perhaps much more reasonable to say, that being very intent upon the reformation of manners, and pious exercises, he was neither capable of knowing what was useful to his religion, nor of preferring the profitable before the honest part. Now he believed he was bound in justice to prefer the duke of Bavaria’s brother before the cardinal candidate. Some apply to Innocent XI what was said of Hadrian VI: he was an honest man, but did not understand politics. It was the good fortune of the Protestants, that in the year 1688, the see of Rome was possessed by a pope who did not well understand his own interests, or was was too stiff to take advantage of the present juncture, to the prejudice of his particular passions.

But after all, who can assure us, that Innocent XI did not in some respects behave himself like a good politician? Has the court of Rome nothing to fear from the too great power of princes, that are most violent against the sects separated from her communion? Did not Sixtus V who so well understood politics, choose rather to countenance Henry IV and queen Elizabeth, than to suffer the king of Spain to grow too powerful? Who can affirm that Innocent XI was not moved by some such spring, when he entered upon measures so contrary to the interests of France, and so useful to the Protestants?

This pope expressed great zeal against women who shewed their bosoms. “Finding he was not

able to prevail with the fair sex, by the many powerful means he used, not to shew their bosoms and their arms, and knowing withal that the terror which seized all Italy, when the Turks besieged Vienna, did did not put a stop to that disorder, had recourse to the last remedy; namely, excommunication. He published an order the thirtieth of November 1683, which enjoined all maids and women to cover their shoulders and breasts, up to their necks, and their arms down to their hands, with some thick and not transparent stuff, upon pain of being so fully excommunicated ipso facto, if they did not obey in six days time, that, except at the last hour, no one but the pope could absolve them; for it was declared, that the confessors who should presume to absolve them from that excommunication, should incur it themselves, and should be liable to such spiritual and temporal punishments as his holiness should think fit to inflict upon them: which temporal punishments, the fathers, husbands, masters, and other heads of families, by whose permission or connivance their daughters and wives act contrary to his ordinance, shall likewise undergo. Nouvelles de la Repub. des Lettres, May 1686, art. ii. pag. 495. ¹⁴²”

I do not know what was the success of these terrible menaces; but I believe that as they were renewed from time to time under the predecessors of Innocent XI, there was occasion to renew them some time after. It is the fate of these sumptuary laws: luxury, and the desire of setting off beauty, quickly elude the wisest regulations. We may say of this disorder, what a grave historian has observed with respect to astrologers; they were always commanded to depart Rome, but they never went. King Lewis XIV has lately I write this in May 1700. ¹⁴³ put out fine edicts against luxury: if he can command obedience upon that

head, it will be a more admirable thing than the power he has had to lessen very considerably in his kingdom the madness of duelling. The news-writers have told us lately, that the advocates of the parliament of Paris, have engaged to see this reformation of profuseness observed in their own houses. Time will inform us, whether by the concurrent authorities of the prince and the husbands, the reformation will be established for a continuance. These gentlemen have been told that as their wives as part of those that set up most for women of quality, would perhaps have a great repugnance to retrench any thing from their sumptuous habits, furniture, coaches, &c. as also from the superfluous number of their waiting-women, embroiderers, tapestry-workers, and footmen, which they have in their service, it had been resolved to oppose a licentiousness so little consistent with the state and quality of those ladies. The king’s intention was, that they should obey and reform themselves the soonest, without any distinction of birth and quality, and that they should begin immediately by not suffering their train to be borne up. It is added, that two famous advocates were charged to communicate this order to their brethren, and that the latter being overjoyed, expressed their acknowledgment for it, and unanimously resolved to thank the first president for procuring a regulation so just, so necessary, and so worthy of the king’s wisdom; and to assure him at the same time, that they would cause it to be observed in their own houses, with the utmost exactness; all of them looking upon it as the most effectual means to free them from infinite discontent, and to prevent the fruits of their laborious employments from continuing to be sacrificed to the extravagant ambition of their wives. It is very likely that they spoke as they meant; for indeed their fine, noble, and profitable employments are attended with great toil. They sometimes envy the happiness of a countryman, who can sleep all night.

Agricolam laudat juris legumque peritus
Sub galli cantum consultor ubi ostia pulsat.
Horat. Sat. 1, lib. i, ver. 9.

The lawyer wak’d, and rising with the sun,
Cries, happy farmers that can sleep till noon.
Creech.

Is it not reasonable, that they should desire that a gain, which costs them so many watchings, should not be squandered away by superfluous expenses; and that the royal authority should enable them to remedy it, since otherwise they could never accomplish it?

I shall insert some verses of Mr de la Fontaine, which shew how freely they wrote against Innocent XI at Paris. We find amongst his posthumous works a letter, part of which I will transcribe:

Pour nouvelles de l'Italie,
Le pape empire tous les jours,
Expliquez, Seigneur, ce discours
Du costé de la maladie.
Car aucun Saint-Père autrement
Ne doit empirer nullement.
Celuy-ci véritablement
N’est envers nous ni Saint ni Père.
Nos soins de l’erreur triumphans
Ne font qu’augmenter sa colère
Contre l’Ainé de ses Enfans.
Sa santé toujours diminué,
L’avenir m’est chose inconnue,
Et je n'en parle qu’à tâtons;
Mais le gens de delà les Monts
Auront bientôt pleuré cet homme;
Car il deffend les Jannetons,
Chose très-nécessaire à Rome.
La Fontaine, œuvr. posthumes, pag. 182, Dutch edit.

From Italy, my lord, they say
The pope grows worse and worse each day,

But let me beg you to apply
This language to his malady;
Since it sounds oddly, in discourse,
To say the pope grows worse and worse.
But as ’tis true, I say it rather,
To us, nor holy he, nor father,
Our triumphs over error here
Only augment his spleen and fear,
And serve to egg his anger on,
Against the church’s eldest son:
Worse as he grows.... I cannot tell
Whether he will do ill or well,
On this howe’er I'll pawn my word,
His loss will not much grief afford
Beyond the Alps .... since he dismiss’d
Each girl who would be freely kiss’d,
And banish’d by, too harsh a doom,
The sweetest, slightest, sin in Rome.

Here are some verses of a freer strain, and taken from the same work:

Et tout le parti Protestant
Du Saint-Père en vain très-content.
J’ay là dessus un conte à faire.
L’autre jour touchant cette affaire
Le Chevalier de Sillery, En parlant de ce pape-cy,
Souhaitoit pour la paix publique,
Qu’il se fust rendu Catholique,
Et le Roy Jaques Huguenot.
Je trouve assez bon ce bon mot.

In vain the party Protestant
Are with our holy pope content.
But t’other day I heard a tale,
To make you laugh it scarce can fail.
The Chevalier de Sillery
Said for the public peace ’twould be,
If once the pope turn’d Catholic,
And good king James a Heretic.
However this odd change might hit,
His saying surely wants not wit,

Racine threw a dart at the pope, but not so openly;

however it was a dart. Innocent died on the 12th of August 1689.—Art. Innocent XI.

Alexander VIII.

Peter Ottoboni, a native of Venice, was pope in the XVIIth century, under the name of Alexander VIII. Marc Ottoboni, his father, grand chancellor of Venice, bought a patent of nobility, which cost him a hundred thousand ducats, in 1646. Peter Ottoboni, having pursued his studies first at Venice and then at Padua, and taking the degree of Doctor of Law at the latter of those two places, went to Rome at the age of twenty. He had, under pope Urban VIII, the government of Terni, Rietti, and Citta-Castellana, and the post of auditor of the Rota. He received the cardinal’s cap under Innocent X, in the year 1652. Two years after, he was made bishop of Brescia. He was datary under Alexander VII, and was at last chosen pope, October the sixth, 1689, after the death of Innocent XI. The war which was kindled with such violence between the house of Austria and France, contributed not a little to the election of Ottoboni; for the neutral cardinals justly feared they should too much expose the Catholic religion by creating a pope born a subject to the king of Spain, as the late pope was, whose partiality against France had done infinite service to the Protestants. They thought therefore, that Ottoboni, who was qualified for the chair, would be a more proper person than any other in that juncture, in regard that he was a Venetian.

The only advantage which France reaped from this . election was, that Pope Alexander VIII did so strenuously animate the Venetians to wage war with the Turks, and encouraged them with such effectual assistance, that he quite frustrated all hopes of a peace, which the emperor was desirous of concluding 19 2

with the Porte, in order to employ all his troops against France. As for the rest, Alexander VⅢ thought of nothing but the aggrandizing of his family.

What is commonly said of beasts, that they are never more dangerous than in their dying bites, may very properly be applied to Nepotism. As it stood upon its last legs under Alexander VIII, so it gathered together all its strength, to be the more capable of devouring. Mr Menage told a story that will come in here very à propos. “Alexander VIII,” said he, “being elected pope at seventy-nine years of age, and having preferred all his nephews in three weeks after, asked one of his domestics ‘ what people said of him?’ The domestic made answer, ‘ that people said he lost no time in the advancement of his family.’ ‘Oh, oh,’ said the pope, ‘ sono vinti tre hore e mezza,—I have but half an hour left out of the four and twenty.’ ” To behave himself as he did with respect to an abuse which his successor should have abolished, was giving it an honourable funeral. Perhaps pope Ottoboni’s great age was not the only reason that obliged him to such quick dispatch in loading his whole family with riches; he considered perhaps, that Rome had had time to forget in some measure the disorders of Nepotism, which had never appeared under the long reign of Innocent XI. Upon this consideration, the complaints of the people might be fainter, and he had to do with subjects who had enjoyed an interval of repose after their ancient fatigues. This calls to my mind the sharping tricks of flatterers, and the dexterity with which, like true jugglers, they pass backwards and forwards the most sacred things. But that this criticism, which does not arise from my own sources, may have more weight and authority, I shall give it from a book printed with licence at Paris. “Among the encomiums he John Palatius, author of a book in five volumes in folio, printed at Venice in 1691, and intituled, “ Gesta Pontificum Romanorum.” ¹⁴⁴ bestows upon Innocent

XI, that which he is most full of is, his having kept his nephews in a private station, in imitation of our Saviour, who knew no other relations but those who did the will of his father. Alexander VIII, having had views exactly opposite to those of his predecessor, Palatio has found out a method to justify his solicitousness in loading his relations with riches and honours; and maintains, that in that point also, the pope imitated the example of our Saviour, who honoured his relations according to the flesh, with the participation of his priesthood, and intrusted them with the dispensation of his Gospel; so fertile is eloquence in inventions, when it is employed in flattering the passions of governors, and excusing the greatest irregularities in their conduct.”

Alexander gave himself scarcely any manner of concern about the differences between France and the court of Rome; and yet that affair was of such consequence as to require a speedy conclusion, and if Alexander VIII had had as much zeal for the interests of St. Peter’s chair as for those of his family, his considering as he did of the short time he had to live, would have induced him much more to make haste in accommodating the difference with France, than in enriching his relations. By delaying it, he left to his successor the glory of re-establishing in France the authority of the pope upon the ancient footing; which it had been impossible to effect, had they waited till the king of France had been at peace with his neighbours. True policy required, that the court of Rome should make the best use of the entangled state of France; and in that Innocent XII did very dextrously. Some fanatics, who had conceived hopes that the league formed against France in 1688, would be fatal to the

papacy, and that the approaching ruin of Catholicism would begin with the reformation of the court of France, were very much out in their measures; for that league has made France more popish than it was in 1682 and 1688, and consequently occasioned the reparation of one of the breaches of popery.

Cardinal Ottoboni was so old when he came to the chair, that it is no wonder his reign was short. He enjoyed the papal dignity but fifteen or sixteen months, dying on the first of February 1691.

Art. Ottoboni.

END OF VOL. II.

London:—Printed by C. Richards, St. Martin's Lane.