Note 329 — Front matter (continued 7)

The correspondence is reproduced in Artaud de Montor's Histoire des Souverains Pontifes (1849), vii., 79. Benedict was severely censured by the pious, and he declared to Cardinal Tencin that he "did not find it clear that Voltaire was a stranger to the faith" (i., 246). The biography of Benedict, one of the most interesting of the Popes, is still to be written. F.X. Kraus, in his edition of Benedict's letters, reproduces fragments of a pretentious Latin biography by a contemporary, Scarselli, and M. Guarnacci has a sketch in his Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum (1751, vol. ii., col. 487-94). These relate only to his earlier years. A. Sandini (Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum, 1754) has only three pages on Benedict, and the anonymous Vie du Pape Benoît XIV. (1783—really written by Cardinal Caraccioli) is not critical. The biographical sketches in Artaud de Montor and Ranke are quite inadequate. But the biographer has now a rich material in Benedict's Bulls (complete Bullarium, 13 vols., 1826 and 1827), works (chief edition, 17 vols., 1839-1846, and three further works edited by Heiner in 1904), and letters. Of the latter the best editions are those of F.X. Kraus (Briefe Benedicts XIV. an den Canonicus Pier Francesco Peggi, 1884), Morani ("Lettere di Benedetto XIV. all' arcidiacono Innocenzo Storani" in the Archivio Storico per le Marche e per l'Umbria, 1885), Fresco ("Lettere inedite di Benedetto XIV. al Cardinale Angelo Maria Querini" in the Nuovo Archivio Veneto, 1909, tomo xviii., pp. 5-93, and xix., pp. 159-215), "Lettere inedite di Benedetto XIV. al Cardinale F. Tamburini" in the Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, vol. xxxiv. (1911), pp. 35-73, and E. de Heeckeren (Correspondance de Benoît XIV., 2 vols., 1912).