Gregory XV. (Alessandro Ludovisi) was born on the 9th of January 1554, in Bologna, where he also studied and taught. He was made archbishop of his native place and cardinal by Paul V., whom he succeeded as pope on the 9th of February 1621. Despite his age and feebleness, Gregory displayed remarkable energy. He aided the emperor in the Thirty Years’ War, and the king of Poland against the Turks. He endorsed the claims of Maximilian of Bavaria to the electoral dignity, and was rewarded with the gift of the Heidelberg library, which was carried off to Rome. Gregory founded the Congregation of the Propaganda, encouraged missions, fixed the order to be observed in conclaves, and canonized Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri and Theresa de Jesus. He died on the 8th of July 1623, and was succeeded by Urban VIII.
See the contemporary life by Vitorelli, continuator of Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum pontiff. Rom.; Ranke’s excellent account, Popes (Eng. trans., Austin), ii. 468 seq.; v. Reumont, Gesch. der Stadt Rom, iii. 2, 609 seq.; Brosch, Gesch. des Kirchenstaates (1880), i. 370 seq.; and the extended bibliography in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie, s.v. “Gregor XV.”
(T. F. C.)
Gregory XVI. (Bartolommeo Alberto Cappellari), pope from 1831 to 1846, was born at Belluno on the 18th of September 1765, and at an early age entered the order of the Camaldoli, among whom he rapidly gained distinction for his theological and linguistic acquirements. His first appearance before a wider public was in 1799, when he published against the Italian Jansenists a controversial work entitled Il Trionfo della Santa Sede, which, besides passing through several editions in Italy, has been translated into several European languages. In 1800 he became a member of the Academy of the Catholic Religion, founded by Pius VII., to which he contributed a number of memoirs on theological and philosophical questions and in 1805 was made abbot of San Gregorio on the Caelian Hill. When Pius VII. was carried off from Rome in 1809, Cappellari withdrew to Murano, near Venice, and in 1814, with some other members of his order, he removed to Padua; but soon after the restoration of the pope he was recalled to Rome, where he received successive appointments as vicar-general of the Camaldoli, councillor of the Inquisition, prefect of the Propaganda, and examiner of bishops. In March 1825 he was created cardinal by Leo XII., and shortly afterwards was entrusted with an important mission to adjust a concordat regarding the interests of the Catholics of Belgium and the Protestants of Holland. On the 2nd of February 1831 he was, after sixty-four days’ conclave, unexpectedly chosen to succeed Pius VIII. in the papal chair. The revolution of 1830 had just inflicted a severe blow on the ecclesiastical party in France, and almost the first act of the new government there was to seize Ancona, thus throwing all Italy, and particularly the Papal States, into an excited condition which seemed to demand strongly repressive measures. In the course of the struggle which ensued it was more than once necessary to call in the Austrian bayonets. The reactionaries in power put off their promised reforms so persistently as to anger even Metternich; nor did the replacement of Bernetti by Lambruschini in 1836 mend matters; for the new cardinal secretary of state objected even to railways and illuminating gas, and was liberal chiefly in his employment of spies and of prisons. The embarrassed financial condition in which Gregory left the States of the Church makes it doubtful how far his lavish expenditure in architectural and engineering works, and his magnificent patronage of learning in the hands of Mai, Mezzofanti, Gaetano, Moroni and others, were for the real benefit of his subjects. The years of his pontificate were marked by the steady development and diffusion of those ultramontane ideas which were ultimately formulated, under the presidency of his successor Pius IX., by the council of the Vatican. He died on the 1st of June 1846.
See A. M. Bernasconi, Acta Gregorii Papae XVI. scilicet constitutiones, bullae, litterae apostolicae, epistolae, vols. i-4 (Rome, 1901 ff.); Cardinal Wiseman, Recollections of the Last Four Popes (London, 1858); Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie, vol. vii. (Leipzig, 1899), 127 ff. (gives literature); Frederik Nielsen, History of the Papacy in the 19th Century, ii. (London, 1906).
(W. W. R.*)
GREGORY,[1] the name of a Scottish family, many members of which attained high eminence in various departments of science, fourteen having held professorships in mathematics or medicine. Of the most distinguished of their number a notice is given below.
I. David Gregory (1627-1720), eldest son of the Rev. John Gregory of Drumoak, Aberdeenshire, who married Janet Anderson in 1621. He was for some time connected with a mercantile house in Holland, but on succeeding to the family estate of Kinardie returned to Scotland, and occupied most of his time in scientific pursuits, freely giving his poorer neighbours the benefit of his medical skill. He is said to have been the first possessor of a barometer in the north of Scotland; and on account of his success by means of it in predicting changes in the weather, he was accused of witchcraft before the presbytery of Aberdeen, but he succeeded in convincing that body of his innocence.
II. James Gregory (1638-1675), Scottish mathematician, younger brother of the preceding, was educated at the grammar school of Aberdeen and at Marischal College of that city. At an early period he manifested a strong inclination and capacity for mathematics and kindred sciences; and in 1663 he published his famous treatise Optica promota, in which he made known his great invention, the Gregorian reflecting telescope. About 1665 he went to the university of Padua, where he studied for some years, and in 1667 published Vera circuli et hyperbolae quadratura, in which he discussed infinite convergent series for the areas of the circle and hyperbola. In the following year he published also at Padua Geometriae pars universalis, in which he gave a series of rules for the rectification of curves and the mensuration of their solids of revolution. On his return to England in this year he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society; in 1669 he became professor of mathematics in the university of St Andrews; and in 1674 he was transferred to the chair of mathematics in Edinburgh. In October 1675, while showing the satellites of the planet Jupiter to some of his students through one of his telescopes, he was suddenly struck with blindness, and he died a few days afterwards.