Historedia
EuropeEvent

Death of Pope Clement XIII

When
1765–1773
Where
Rome; papal acts issued from Rome; demand addressed to the Holy See; Holy See
Episodes
4

Pope Clement XIII, who had defended the Jesuits against Bourbon pressure, died in Rome during the night of 2 February 1769. The claim that he died the night before preparing an order to dissolve the Jesuits is unsupported: the papal abolition of the order came in 1773 under Clement XIV.

Episodes

  1. 7 January 1765 – 1768 · papal acts issued from RomeClement XIII's Defense of the Jesuits

    Clement XIII praised the Jesuits in the 1765 bull Apostolicum pascendi, but expulsions by Catholic powers continued regardless.

  2. January 1769 · demand addressed to the Holy SeeBourbon Demand for Suppression

    In January 1769 the Bourbon powers jointly demanded total suppression of the Jesuits, seizing papal enclaves in the dispute.

  3. night of 2 February 1769 · RomeDeath of Clement XIII in Rome

    Clement XIII died during the night of 2 February 1769 in Rome, amid Bourbon demands for Jesuit suppression.

  4. 1773 · Holy SeeActual Timing of the Jesuit Suppression

    The Holy See abolished the Jesuit order in 1773 under Clement XIV, not on the eve of Clement XIII's death.

Background and detail

Background. Carlo della Torre di Rezzonico reigned as Clement XIII from 6 July 1758. He warmly espoused the Jesuit order in the bull Apostolicum pascendi of 7 January 1765, dismissing criticisms as calumnies, but by 1768 the Jesuits had been expelled from France, Naples and Sicily, and Parma.

Bourbon Pressure. The Bourbon kings, backing their relative's quarrel with the pope over Parma, seized Avignon, Benevento and Pontecorvo and in January 1769 united in a peremptory demand for the total suppression of the Jesuits, shortly before Clement's death.

Death and Aftermath. Clement XIII died during the night of 2 February 1769 in Rome and was buried in the Vatican on 8 February; his remains were moved in 1774 to a monument sculpted by Antonio Canova. The Holy See's abolition of the Jesuits followed only in 1773, under his successor.

People involved

Sources

  1. Pope Clement XIII Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-30
  2. Suppression of the Society of Jesus Wikipedia, revision of 2026-07-24

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.