CLEMENT XIV (GtovANNI VINCENZO ANTONIO GANGANELLI), Pope: b. San Arcan gelo, near Rimini, Italy, 31 Oct. 1705; d. 22 Sept. 1774. He was a Franciscan friar, a man of great piety and worth; the friend and con fidant of Benedict XIV. He was elected Pope in 1769 after a struggle in the conclave in which cardinals influenced by various of the Catholic powers made interest in favor of the suppres sion of the Society of Jesus. When the new Pope showed an unwillingness to do the will of the powers, the charge was tnade that he had received the support of many members of the conclave upon his promise to suppress the order; but this charge has been conclusively proved to be without foundation in fact; yet such was the urgency of the powers, he felt himself constrained in the interest of peace and of the Church to disband the Jesuit order, which he did in the apostolic brief Dominus ac Redemptor which declares the Society of Jesus dissolved forever. The fact that the brief had
been drawn up and' completed in November 1772 but was not published till July 1773 is proof that he was loath to publish so severe a decree against the order. After its issue he fell into a rapid decline, presumably from re morse, and though all his life he had been ex ceedingly vigorous, died little more than 12 months after the brief was published. It was this pontiff who founded the Clementine Mu seum in Rome. Consult Caraccioli, 'Vie de Clement XIV' (1775); Theiner, (Geschichte des Pontificats Clements XIV' (1853); Von Reumont, (Ganganelli (Papst Clement XIV), seine Briefe und seine Zeit' (Berlin 1847); Ravignan, (Clement XIII et Clement XIV' (Parts 1854).