page_title: Pope Clement XI
section_title: Actions
hierarchical_section_title: Pope Clement XI / Pontificate / Actions
caption_attribution_description: English: Stained glass depiction of Pope Clement XI at the Cathedral of Saint Mother Teresa in Prishtina
context_page_description: Pope Clement XI, born Giovanni Francesco Albani, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 23 November 1700 to his death in 1721.
  Clement XI was a patron of the arts and of science. He was also a great benefactor of the Vatican Library, his interest in archaeology is credited with saving much of Rome’s antiquity. He authorized expeditions which succeeded in rediscovering various ancient Christian writings and authorized excavations of the Roman catacombs.
context_section_description: Soon after his accession to the pontificate, the War of the Spanish Succession broke out.
  In 1703 Pope Clement XI ordered a synod of Catholic bishops in northern Albania that discussed promotion of the Council of Trent decrees within Albanian dioceses, stemming conversions among locals to Islam and securing agreement to deny communion to crypto-Catholics who outwardly professed the Muslim faith.
  Despite initially holding an ambiguous neutrality in world affairs, Clement XI was later forced to name Charles, Archduke of Austria, as the King of Spain, since the imperial army had conquered much of northern Italy and was threatening Rome itself in January 1709.
  By the Treaty of Utrecht that put an end to the war, the Papal States lost their suzerainty over the Farnese Duchy of Parma and Piacenza in favour of Austria, and lost Comacchio as well, a blow to the prestige of the Papal States.
  In 1713 Clement XI issued the bull Unigenitus in response to the spread of the Jansenist heresy. There followed great upheaval in France, where apart from theological issues, a strong Gallican tendency persisted. The bull, which was produced with the contribution of Gregorio Selleri, a lector at the College of Saint Thomas, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum, condemned Jansenism by extracting and anathematizing as heretical 101 propositions from the works of Quesnel declaring them to be identical in substance with propositions already condemned in the writings of Jansenius.
  The resistance of many French ecclesiastics and the refusal of the French parlements to register the bull led to controversies extending through the greater part of the 18th century. Because the local governments did not officially receive the bull, it was not, technically, in force in those areas – an example of the interference of states in religious affairs common before the 20th century.
  During his reign as a pope the famous Illyricum Sacrum was commissioned, and today it is one of the main sources of the field of Albanology, with over 5,000 pages divided in several volumes written by the Jesuit Daniele Farlati and Dom Jacopo Coleti.
  Clement XI made a concerted effort to acquire Christian manuscripts in Syriac from Egypt and other places in the Middle East, greatly expanding the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana's collection of Syriac works.
caption: Stained glass depiction of Clement XI at the Catholic Cathedral in Prishtinë, Kosovo
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