Ex quo singulari
The constitution of 1742 in which Benedict XIV reviewed a century of Roman rulings on the Chinese rites, quoted them at length, confirmed Clement XI’s prohibition, annulled the permissions granted by the legate Mezzabarba and imposed an oath on missionaries.
The document is Rome’s own history of the controversy as well as its ruling. Sections 1 to 6 recount the decrees of 1645, 1656 and 1669 and the decision confirmed by Clement XI on 20 November 1704. It then reproduces the decree of 1710, the constitution Ex illa die of 19 March 1715 with its list of prohibitions, the pastoral letter that the legate Carlo Ambrogio Mezzabarba issued at Macao on 4 November 1721 with a list of permissions, and a brief of Clement XII of 1735. Sections 21 to 24 give the judgment: the permissions were never approved by the Holy See, they are to be held as if they had never existed, and no one may use them. The constitution is dated at St Mary Major on the fifth day before the Ides of July 1742.
It is cited in the Chinese Rites Controversy both for its own decision and for the earlier papal texts it preserves.
Cited in
- 1704 to 1742, firm date