BENEDICT XIV  . (Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini), pope from 1740 to 1758, was born at Bologna on the 31st of March 1675 . At the age of thirteen he entered the Collegium Clementinum at Rome . He served the Curia in many and important capacities, yet devoted his leisure time to theological and canonistic study . Benedict XIII. made him archbishop of Theodosia in partibus, then of Ancona (1727), and the next year created him cardinal priest . In 1731 Clement XII. translated him to his native cityof Bologna, where as archbishop he was both efficient and popular . He published valuable works, notably De servorum Dei beatification et canonizatione, De sacrificio missae, as well as a treatise on the feasts of Christ and the Virgin and of some saints honoured in Bologna . In a conclave which had lasted for months he was elected on the 17th of August 1740 the successor of Clement XTI . Benedict XIV. was not merely earnest and conscientious, but of incisive intellect, and unfailingly cheerful and witty . In several respects he bettered the economic conditions of the pas al states, but was disinclined to undertake the needed thorough-going reform of its administration . In foreign politics he made important concessions to Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, Spain, and was the first pope expressly to recognize the king of Prussia as such . In 1741 he issued the bull Immensa pastorum principis; demanding more humane treatment for the Indians of Brazil and Paraguay, and in the bulls Ex quo singulari (1742) and ©mnium sollicitudinum (1744) he rebuked the missionary methods of the Jesuits in accommodating their message to the heathen usages of the Chinese and of the natives of Malabar .

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accord with the spirit of the age he reduced the number of holy days in several Catholic countries . To the end of his life he kept up his studies and his intercourse with other scholars, and founded several learned societies . His masterpiece, Libri octo. de synods diocesana, begun in Bologna, appeared during his pontificate . He died on the 3rd of May 1758 . His works, published in twelve quarto volumes at Rome (1747-1751), appeared in more nearly complete editions at Venice in 1767 and at Prato, 1839–1846; also Briefe Benedicts XIV., ed . F . X . Kraus (2nd ed., Freiburg, 1888); Benedicti XIV . Papae opera inedita, ed . F . Heiner (Freiburg, 1904) . See Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie, ii .

572 ff . ; Wetzer and Welter, Kirchenlexikon, ii . 317 ff . (W . W .