1708 Pope Clement XI (1700-1721), to avoid commiting himself to the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, ordered a festival called for the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary immaculate.
1709 Having refused to submit to the bull Vineam Domini Sabaoth, the nuns of Port Royal were excommunicated, then dispersed to other convents. The convent was leveled, and corpses in the graveyard were dug up and thrown into a single pit in the cemetary of St. Lambert. This event signals the victory of the Jesuits over the Jansenist movement. 1713 Pope Clement XI issued the bull Unigenitus, condemning Jansenism and the proposition that “The reading of Sacred Scripture is for all”; adding, “We strictly forbid them [the laity] to have the books of the Old and New Testament in the vulgar tongue.” It also condemned the error that “The Lord’s Day ought to be sanctified by Christians with readings of pious works and above all of the Holy Scriptures. It is harmful for a Christian to wish to withdraw from this reading.” The bull was very unpopular in France, where an edition of the gospels with Jansenist notes had been published. The Emperor of Austria forbade the distribution of Unigenitus. This bull was used in Sicilian seminaries as an example of the fallibility of Popes. In France, the Gallicans opposed the bull on the grounds that the pope had no right to impose a doctrine on the French church without the consent of the French bishops and without the agreement of a General Council.
1755 Anti-Roman feelings had become quite strong in the Middle East. The Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem declared Roman Catholic baptism invalid, and ordered the rebaptism of converts.
1773 On 21 July, Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Jesuit order through the bull Dominus ac Redemptor, giving in to pressure from the Spanish and French.
1791 On March 10, Pope Pius VI (1775-99) denounced the French Revolution and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
1793 On January 21, Louis XVI, king of France, beheaded.
1794 Publication of Richard Brothers’ A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times. Brothers announced that the world would be destroyed in 1795. He claimed to be the heir of king David and stated that the Jews would be restored to Palestine in 1798, with himself as their ruler. Brothers ended his days in confinement as a lunatic.
1797 As a result of Bonaparte’s invasion of Italy (1796), Pope Pius VI (1775-99) signed the treaty of Tolentino, by which he surrendered Bologna and Tolentino.
1798 Pope Pius VI (1775-99) was forced into exile from Rome by French troops. Premillenialists saw this as a fulfillment of prophecies of the 1260-day reign of “the Beast,” dating the rise of the papacy to 538.
1800 Orthodox influence in the Holy Land began a dramatic rise in this period. Latin monks were lamenting that the Church of the Nativity had been in Greek hands for forty or fifty years. A steady flow of financial aid and pilgrims streamed into the Holy Land from Russia.
