Uniate bishop Inocentiu Micu Klein, who has remained a fierce advocate of Transylvania’s Romanians, eventually flees to Rome, where his appeals to the pope prove fruitless. (He will die in a Roman monastery in 1768.)

Pope Benedict XIV has improved the finances of the Papal States, reduced taxes, encouraged agriculture and free trade and drastically cut the military budget, but has been unable to completely reform the administration, still corrupt from previous papacies.

At the University of Bologna he has revived the practice of anatomical studies and established a chair of surgery.

He has a clear view of ecclesiastical problems, has respect for differing opinions and an ability to distinguish between dogma and theory.
 
Benedict's health worsens in 1758 and after a battle with gout, he dies on May 3, 1758 at the age of eighty-three.

His final words to those surrounding him on his deathbed are, "I leave you in the hands of God."

Following his funeral, he is interred in Saint Peter's Basilica and a large catafalque will be erected in his honor.

Benedict had commissioned a team of architects led by Nicola Salvi and Luigi Vanvitelli to design a large palace that is to be 'more complex and with greater baroque style than the box of a palace Vanvitelli designed in Caserta'.

The palace was to be built south of St. Peter's Basilica, but will never be built, as the plans will be quietly ignored by Benedict's successor, Clement XIII.

They will be brought up once more by Pius VI late in his papacy, but will be stopped due to the possibility of invasion.

Carlo della Torre di Rezzonico, the future Clement XIII, was born in 1693 to a recently ennobled family of Venice, the second of two children of the man who bought the unfinished palace on the Grand Canal (now Ca' Rezzonico) and finished its construction.

Born to Giovanni Battista Rezzonico and Vittoria Barbarigo, his brother is Aurelio.

He had received a Jesuit education in Bologna and later studied at the University of Padua where he obtained his doctorate in canon law and civil law.

From there, he had traveled to Rome, where he attended the Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles.

Rezzonico became the Referendary of the Apostolic Signatura and remained in that position from 1716 to 1718 when he was appointed as the Governor of Fano.

He was then ordained to the priesthood on December 23, 1731 in Rome.

Pope Clement XII appointed him to the cardinalate in 1737 as the Cardinal-Deacon of San Nicola in Carcere; Rezzonico had also filled various important posts in the Roman Curia.

Rezzonico had been chosen as Bishop of Padua in 1743 and received episcopal consecration in Rome by Pope Benedict XIV himself.

Rezzonico had visited his diocese on frequent occasions and reformed the way that the diocese ran, paying attention to the social needs of the diocese; he had been the first to do this in five decades.

He later opted to become the Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in 1747 and later to become the Cardinal-Priest of San Marco in 1755.

The College of Cardinals gathered at the papal conclave in order to elect a successor to Benedict XIIV after his death from gout.

Direct negotiations between the rival factions had resulted in the proposal for the election of Rezzonico.

On the evening of July 6, 1758, Rezzonico had received thirty-one votes out of a possible forty-four, one more than the required amount.

He selects the pontifical name of "Clement XIII" in honor of Pope Clement XII, who had elevated him to the cardinalate.

Rezzonico is crowned as pontiff on July 16, 1758 by the protodeacon, Cardinal Alessandro Albani.

In the same year, the Rezzonico family will celebrate Ludovico Rezzonico's marriage into the powerful Savorgnan family.

Rezzonico will be notorious for his rampant nepotism throughout his pontificate.

Daun and his army celebrate their victory at Hochkirch, and he will receive a blessed sword and hat from Pope Clement XIII, a reward usually granted for defeating "infidels".

Notification of the battle arrives in Vienna during the celebration of the Empress's name day, to the delight of Maria Theresa and her court, gathered at Schönbrunn Palace; she will eventually create an endowment of two hundred and fifty thousand gulden for Daun and his heirs.

Instead of following Frederick, or cutting off Retzow's division, which had not participated in the battle, Daun had withdrew to the heights and positions he had occupied before the battle, so that his men might have a good rest under blankets after the fatigue of the day.

After staying here for six days, they march out in stealth to take up a new position between Belgern and Jesewitz, while Frederick remains at Doberschütz.

The costly Austrian victory has decided nothing.

Daun's troops, thwarted in an attempt to take Dresden, are forced to withdraw to Austrian territory for the winter, so that Saxony remains under Prussian occupation.

The Russians fail in an attempt to take Kolberg in Pomerania from the Prussians.

The Society of Jesus is suffering suppression sponsored by a confederation led by Bourbon absolutists.

Lorenzo Ganganelli (later Pope Clement XIV), a Conventual Franciscan, is made cardinal in 1759 by Pope Clement XIII because he is supposed to be friendly toward the Jesuits.

Ganganelli issues a report condemning blood libel accusations.

Clement XIII's pontificate will be repeatedly disturbed by disputes respecting the pressures to suppress the Jesuits coming from the progressive Enlightenment circles of the philosophes in France.

Clement XIII places the Encyclopédie of D'Alembert and Diderot on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, but this index is not as effective as it had been in the previous century.

More unexpected resistance comes from the less progressive courts of Spain, the Two Sicilies, and Portugal.

The reforming minister of Joseph I of Portugal, the future Marquis of Pombal, expels the Jesuits from Portugal in 1759 and transports them all to Civitavecchia, as a "gift for the Pope."

James Francis Edward Stuart, "the Old Pretender", dies in Rome on January 1, 1766 in his home, the Palazzo Muti, and is buried in the crypt of St. Peter's Basilica in present-day Vatican City.

His burial is marked by the Monument to the Royal Stuarts.

His claimed reign had lasted for sixty-four years, three months and sixteen days, longer than any legitimate British monarch until Queen Elizabeth II's reign surpasses it on May 23, 2016.

Pope Clement XIII had recognized James as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland as "James III and VIII", but following James's death the Pope refuses to recognize the claim to the English throne of his eldest son Charles; instead, from January 14, 1766, he finally accepts the Hanoverian dynasty as the legitimate rulers of Britain and Ireland.

This decision leads to a gradual relaxation and reform of the anti-Catholic "Penal laws" in Britain and Ireland.

In 1792, the Papacy will specifically refer to George III as the "King of Great Britain and Ireland", which will elicit  a protest from James's second son Henry, who at that time will be the Jacobite claimant.

The Suppression of the Jesuits in Spain and in the Spanish colonies, and in its dependency, the Kingdom of Naples,is the last of the expulsions, with Portugal (1759) and France (1764) having already set the pattern.

The Spanish crown had already begun a series of administrative and other changes in their overseas empire, such as reorganizing the viceroyalties, rethinking economic policies, and establishing a military, so that the expulsion of the Jesuits is seen as part of this general trend, known generally as the Bourbon Reforms.

The aim of the reforms is to curb the increasing autonomy and self-confidence of American-born Spaniards, reassert crown control, and increase revenues.

Some historians doubt that the Jesuits were guilty of intrigues against the Spanish crown that were used as the immediate cause for the expulsion.

Contemporaries in Spain attribute the suppression of the Jesuits to the Esquilache Riots, named after the Italian advisor to Bourbon king Carlos III, that erupted after a sumptuary law was enacted.

The law placed restrictions on men's wearing of voluminous capes and limiting the breadth of sombreros the men could wear was seen as an "insult to Castilian pride."

When an angry crowd of those resisters converged on the royal palace, King Carlos had fled to the countryside.

The crowd had shouted "Long Live Spain! Death to Esquilache!"

His Flemish palace guard had fired warning shots over the people's heads.

An account says that a group of Jesuit priests appeared on the scene, soothed the protesters with speeches, and sent them home.

Carlos had decided to rescind the tax hike and hat-trimming edict, and to fire his finance minister.

The monarch and his advisers are alarmed by the uprising, which challenges royal authority, but the Jesuits are accused of inciting the mob and publicly accusing the monarch of religious crimes.

Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, attorney for the Council of Castile, the body overseeing central Spain, articulates this view in a report the king reads.

Charles III orders the convening of a special royal commission to draw up a master plan to expel the Jesuits.

The commission first meets in January 1767.

It models its plan on the tactics deployed by France's Philip IV against the Knights Templar in 1307—emphasizing the element of surprise.

Charles's adviser Campomanes had written a treatise on the Templars in 1747, which may have informed the implementation of the Jesuit suppression.

Jansenists and mendicant orders have long opposed the Jesuits and seek to curtail their power.