In the spring of 1758 his robust constitution yielded to the ravages of gout, labour, and anxiety, and he died on May 3d. He was not, as some say, "the idol of Rome." The cardinals felt the disdain of them which he often expresses in his letters, and many of the clergy regarded him as too severe on them and too pliant to the laity. Neither was he a genius. Clearness of mind, immense industry, and sober ways are the sources of his output. His works are not read today even by ecclesiastics, and it is ludicrous to represent them as his title to immortality. Yet Benedict XIV. was a great Pope: a wise ruler of the Church at a time when once more, unconsciously, it approached a world-crisis. The magnitude of the change which was taking place in Europe he never perceived, but his policy was wise in the measure of his perception, and his geniality of temperament, united to so wholehearted a devotion to his duty, won some respect for the name of Pope in lands where it had been for two hundred years a thing of contempt.
FOOTNOTES:
[324] Modern research has easily settled that Galilei was not physically ill-treated, and that there was probably no intention to carry out the formal threat of torture. But this refutation of the excesses of the older anti-Papal historians leaves the serious part of the indictment intact. Galilei was forbidden by the Holy Office in 1616 to advance as a positive discovery his view of the earth's position. In 1632, to the great indignation of Urban VIII., he disregarded this prohibition, which he thought a dead letter, and was condemned by the Inquisition as "vehemently suspected of heresy." The crime against culture is not materially lessened by the fact that the Inquisition lodged the astronomer in its most comfortable rooms.
[325] Lettres familières (1858), i., 250-1. The President was in Rome during the conclave in the following year and repeated that Lambertini was "licentious in speech but exemplary in conduct" (ii., 399). On a later page (439) he frankly describes the Pope as "indecent in speech." There is a passage in one of the Pope's later letters to Cardinal Tencin which may illustrate his censure. Benedict tells the Cardinal that he has bought a nude Venus for his collection, and finds that the Prince and Princess of Württemberg have, with a diamond ring, scratched their names on a part of the statue which one may not particularize as plainly as the Pope does (Correspondance de Benoît XIV., ii., 268).
[326] Lettres familières, ii., 439.
[327] September 29, 1745.
[328] Letter to Tencin August 1, 1753 (ii., 282).
[329] The correspondence is reproduced in Artaud de Montor's Histoire des Souverains Pontifes (1849), vii., 79. Benedict was severely censured by the pious, and he declared to Cardinal Tencin that he "did not find it clear that Voltaire was a stranger to the faith" (i., 246). The biography of Benedict, one of the most interesting of the Popes, is still to be written. F.X. Kraus, in his edition of Benedict's letters, reproduces fragments of a pretentious Latin biography by a contemporary, Scarselli, and M. Guarnacci has a sketch in his Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum (1751, vol. ii., col. 487-94). These relate only to his earlier years. A. Sandini (Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum, 1754) has only three pages on Benedict, and the anonymous Vie du Pape Benoît XIV. (1783—really written by Cardinal Caraccioli) is not critical. The biographical sketches in Artaud de Montor and Ranke are quite inadequate. But the biographer has now a rich material in Benedict's Bulls (complete Bullarium, 13 vols., 1826 and 1827), works (chief edition, 17 vols., 1839-1846, and three further works edited by Heiner in 1904), and letters. Of the latter the best editions are those of F.X. Kraus (Briefe Benedicts XIV. an den Canonicus Pier Francesco Peggi, 1884), Morani ("Lettere di Benedetto XIV. all' arcidiacono Innocenzo Storani" in the Archivio Storico per le Marche e per l'Umbria, 1885), Fresco ("Lettere inedite di Benedetto XIV. al Cardinale Angelo Maria Querini" in the Nuovo Archivio Veneto, 1909, tomo xviii., pp. 5-93, and xix., pp. 159-215), "Lettere inedite di Benedetto XIV. al Cardinale F. Tamburini" in the Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, vol. xxxiv. (1911), pp. 35-73, and E. de Heeckeren (Correspondance de Benoît XIV., 2 vols., 1912).
[330] I., 49.
[331] Ex omnibus Christiani orbis, Oct. 16, 1756. It prescribes silence on the disputed issues and leaves it to confessors to determine whether their penitents are so wilfully rebellious against the Bull Unigenitus as to be excluded from the sacraments.