Pope Benedict XIV

Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini was born 31 March 1675 and became head of the Catholic Church on 17 August 1740. One of the most learned men to hold the office, he committed himself to enforcing the Council of Trent's decrees while simultaneously promoting scientific learning, Thomism, and the study of the human form. He created the Sacred and Profane Museums, reduced some taxes in the Papal States while raising others, and encouraged agriculture and free trade. Throughout his reign he published numerous theological and ecclesiastical works, restoring older elements to the Breviary and staging ceremonies with deliberate grandeur to counter the secularism creeping through European courts. Near the end, in 1758, he was forced to expel the Jesuits from Portugal at Joseph I's demand, offering minimal theological cover for a politically driven suppression. He died 3 May 1758, leaving Horace Walpole to call him "a pope without nepotism, an author without vanity, a man whom neither intellect nor power could corrupt."