Cartulary of briefs of Pope Benedict XIV and Clement XIII. Collection of letters to Cardinal Stoppani.

Apostolic or Pontifical Brief is a type of document signed by the Pope and countersigned with the impression of the Fisherman’s ring. This Volume collects 65 briefs received by Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Stoppani on various ecclesiastical matters of the time such as management of the monasteries, policy of indulgences, Catholic orthodoxy and heterodoxy, governance of dioceses, policy of the cardinal colleges, guidelines on the administration and offices in the metropolitan cathedrals, observances on charity and poverty, female convents, etc…

In the final part of the volume we find 4 briefs of Clement XIII, successor of Benedict XIV. Calligraphed in Vatican chancellery script on fine vellum. Bound in Roman parchment. Giovanni Francesco Stoppani (Milan 1695 – Rome, 1774) studied at the Borromeo College of Pavia, at the Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles and at the University of Pavia, where he graduated In utroque jure (law and canons). He entered the ecclesiastical state in 1715, was arbitrator of the tribunal of the Signatura, internal prelate of Pope Innocent XIII and inquisitor general of Malta from 1730 to 1736.

After the death of Pope Benedict XIV, Stoppani ran for pope, supported mainly by the French crown. Benedict XIV. He was a man very much of his time, imbued with the enlightened spirit, of great erudition and open to all cultural currents. He corresponded with thinkers and scientists without discrimination – his contacts with Voltaire himself are notorious – to the point of being respected and admired even in Protestant countries.

He promoted higher education in the sciences in all his territories and created at the University of Bologna a school of surgery and a chair for the teaching of obstetrics, for which he bought the complete collection of models of Professor Giovanni Antonio Galli. He also founded in this city an archaeological museum, to which he donated his important collection of coins from the Roman imperial period.

Benedict XIV ordered the deletion of Nicolaus Copernicus’ De revolutionibus from the index of forbidden books, thus closing the opposition to the heliocentric theory of the solar system. It was of special importance that he implanted, in a pioneering way in Europe, an antivariol vaccine in all the Papal States.

He had a very active papacy, reforming the education of priests, the calendar of the feasts of the Church, the liturgy and many papal institutions. He was the first pope to allow the foundation of female religious orders independent of male orders, which could dedicate themselves to the active life or to direct pastoral work, since until then and as a consequence of the decrees of Boniface VIII and the Council of Trent, religious women could only lead a contemplative life.

As for the intellectual works of Benedict XIV, collected in twelve volumes, it is necessary to highlight De servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione (1734-1738), De synodo diocesana (1748) and De festis, de sanctorum Missae sacrificio (1748), masterpieces of canon law that are still in force today. For pontifical documents of a pastoral nature and of universal scope, it was Benedict XIV who took up the name “encyclical” again.

He is undoubtedly one of the popes of the greatest culture and intellectual solvency, and, seen in historical perspective, his pontificate is among the most important in the history of the Church.