ABSTRACT
In the period from 1564 to the later seventeenth century Innocent XI arguably represents neither a unique case of devotion to pastoral duty as diocesan of Rome nor a new departure in papal policy in concentrating on such episcopal responsibilities. But his undoubted exemplary model was taken up by the first half of the eighteenth century and developed in a dramatic way which was at the time new, when Benedict XIII sought to extend the influence of this Roman model by reviving an explicit and discrete role of the bishop of the city as also metropolitan of the Roman province. As archbishop of Benevento, the see which he was to retain even as pope, Orsini had celebrated a series of diocesan synods, at a time when provincial councils, as called for by Tridentine regulation, had become a rarity, not least in Italy. Benedict’s summons of a council of the Roman province, early in his pontificate, was thus a conscious alteration of recent tradition, and was assured of publicity because of its excep tional nature. But his explicit and repeated insistence that he was presiding as metropolitan, not as supreme pontiff, did not resolve profound difficulties in the attempted distinction of these roles.1
