Domenico Silvio Passionei (2 December 1682 – 5 July 1761) was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
Biography
Domenico Silvio Passionei was born in Fossombrone near Urbino, Marche, the second of the two children of Count Benedetto Passionei and Virginia Sabatelli. At the age of thirteen, he went to Rome in 1695, where he studied philosophy at the Collegio Clementino, an elite school for young noblemen. He studied law at the university La Sapienza. Already in these early years he corresponded with scholars throughout Europe, including Protestants and Jansenists.
In 1706, he was sent to Paris, where he stayed for two years as secretary to his relative, Cardinal Filippo Antonio Gualterio.
Passionei was decidedly anti-Jesuit, opposing the beatification of the Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmine in 1754. Other than that, he was a proponent of a liberal Catholicism and considered a protector of Jansenists, and defended authors like Montesquieu and Helvétius in Index trials. He was also a manuscript collector, minuscule 847 and minuscule 848 were his manuscripts.
Passionei retired to a Camaldolese monastery near Frascati where he died on July 5, 1761, from complications of a stroke.