CLEMENT XL (Wan Francesco Albani), succeeded Innocent XII. in November 1700. Ho was then fifty-one years of age, bad been made a cardinal by Alexander VIII., and had a merited reputation for learning and general information. He was one of the men of letters who frequented the society of Christina of Sweden during her residence at Rome. It was with seeming repugnance, and after several days' hemitatiou, that he accepted the papal dignity. The war of the Spanish succession was then just breaking out, and Clement in vain exerted all his powers of persuasion with the courts of France and of Austria to prevent the impending calamity. Louis XIV., having placed his eon Philip ou the throne of Spain, demauded for him of the pope the investiture of the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, whilst the emperor claimed it likewise as his right. Clement delayed giving his decision, and the intrigues of the agents of the two rival powers disturbed the peace of his own capitaL In 1707 the Austrians, under Marshal Daun, traversed the papal state to proceed to the conquest of Naples ; and the pope, unable to prevent them, stipulated only that they should not pass through the city of Rome. In the following year the pope came to an open rupture with the emperor, Joseph I., whose troops had taken possession of Comacchio in the papal state. After trying remonstrances in vain, Clement collected an army of 25,000 men, under the command of Count Marsigli ; but the papal troops retreated before the Austrians, who occupied Romagna and the Marches, and the pope was obliged to sue for peace, which the emperor granted in January 1709. Comacchio was ultimately restored to the pope.
Clement was tenacious of what be coueidered as the prerogatives of hie see over the clergy of other countries, and he quarrelled in 1715 with the House of Savoy, which then ruled over Sicily, about a tribunal in that island, called di Monarchia, which interfered with the eccle siastical immunities and the alleged rights of Rome over Naples and Sicily, as fiefs of the papal see. The king, Victor Amadeus IL, stood firm ; and many of the Sicilian clergy, who refused to obey the directions of the tribunal, were either imprisoned or obliged to emigrate. About 400 of them took refuge at Rome. Clement had also long and serious disputes with France. He began by his bull Vineam Domini,' renewing the interdict which his predecessors had issued against the Jansenists, and declaring their propositions about grace and free will to be heretical. In 1713 be issued the famous
bull Unigenitus,' which set the whole kingdom of France, court, parliament, and clergy in an uproar. This bull condemned 101 pro positions of a hook by Father Queauel, entitled 'Moral Reflections on the Now Testament ; ' in which that writer revived several opinions of St. Augustin, St. Prosper, and other old fathers, which sounded favourable to the Janseuistic dogmas of predestination and grace. The Jesuits, who asserted that grace was subordinate to the will of man, and who were accused by the Jansenists of Pelagian heresy, stirred themselves to have Quesnel's book condemned. Several French prelates, Bosauet and Cardinal Noailles among others, approved of the general tenor of Quesnel's book, which contains much sound moral doctrine. Cardinal Noailles had already indisposed the pope against him by presiding at an assembly of the French clergy in 1705, in which the bishops were declared to be judges in matters of doctrine, independent of the pretensions of the popes, who would reduce them to the condition of mere registrars and executors of the papal decrees. Father le Teller, a Jesuit and confessor to Louis XIV., urged the king iu favour of the bull Unigenitus,' which was at last registered by the parliament of Paris, after much opposition, and continued for years after to keep up a sort of schism between France and Rome.
Another source of trouble to Clement proceeded from the disputes concerning the Jesuit missionaries in China, who had gained consider able influence at the court of Pekin, and were accused by the other missionaries of latitudinarianism, of winking at several superstitious practices in order to make proselytes, and of even countenancing idolatry. Clement sent in 1702 Cardinal de Touruon as legate to China; hut the cardinal on arriving at Macao was so worried by the angry controversialists that he died of anxiety and disappointment. Clement afterwards issued a constitution, or series of ordinauces, by which he regulated the course to be followed by missionaries in making proselytes ; and when that course failed, sent the prelate Mezzabarba as his legate ; hut the legate was coldly received by the emperor, who was said to be prepossessed against him by the Jesuits, and soon dismissed from the celestial empire.