Descrizione

Folio (295x210 mm). 13, [1 blank] pp. Lacking the final blank leaf. Unbound. Title page printed in red and blck with two engraved vignettes. Other engraved vignette and initial on the following leaf. Issued on 9 February 1749 (“Datum apud Sanctam Mariam Majorem die 9. Februarii 1749”). Large stain to the lower margin of the first two leaves, otherwise a good copy.
This interesting papal brief from 1749 is addressed to Cardinal Henry Stuart and concerns the case of a Jewish man who was ready to convert to Catholicism, and his Protestant wife. Despite dispensations in the missionary practice in Japan and China and also taking Jewish law into consideration, the Pope explains that the man must be baptised, the wife must renounce heresy, and then the couple must be remarried under Catholic law.
Henry Benedict Mary Clement Stuart of York was born in Rome in 1725. He was the younger son of James Francis Edward Stuart, son of King James II of England, de iure James III, called the Old Pretender, and Maria Clementina Sobieska, granddaughter of Jan Sobieski, king of Poland. He was baptized by Pope Benedict XIII. From birth he had the title of Prince of England, Scotland, France and Ireland. His brother, Charles Edward, was known as the Young Pretender, King Charles III. In October 1745, Henry went to Paris to seek support for his brother Prince Charles' campaign to restore their father to his thrones. In May and June 1746, he participated in his only active military service at the siége of Antwerp. In June 1747, Pope Benedict XIV announced his intention to elevate Duke Henry to the Sacred College of Cardinals. He received the clerical tonsure from Pope Benedict XIV in the Sistine Chapel, on June 30, 1747. Created cardinal deacon in the consistory of July 3, 1747, he received the red hat on July 8, 1747 and the deaconry of S. Maria in Portico Campitelli, July 31, 1747. In 1758 he was elected titular archbishop of Corinto. In 1788, when his brother Prince Charles Stuart died, he was proclaimed by the Jacobites Henry IX, king de iure of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. In 1798, during the invasion of Rome by the Bonapartist troops, he heavily contributed to the ransom paid to avoid the sacking of the city. He died on July 13, 1807, in the episcopal palace of Frascati.
Italian Union Catalog, IT\ICCU\RMLE\036934.