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Pope Innocent X

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Pope
Innocent X
Bishop of Rome
Portrait of Innocent X, by Diego Velázquez (1650, Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome )
Portrait of Innocent X, by Diego Velázquez (1650, Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome )
Church Catholic Church
Papacy began 15 September 1644
Papacy ended 7 January 1655
Predecessor Urban VIII
Successor Alexander VII
Previous posts Legate to France (1625)
Titular Latin Patriarch of Antioch (1626–1629)
Apostolic Nuncio to Spain (1626–1629)
Cardinal-Priest of Sant'Eusebio (1629–1644)
Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy (1639–1644)
Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church (1643–1644)
Orders
Consecration 25 January 1626
by Laudivio Zacchia
Created cardinal 19 November 1629
by Urban VIII
Personal details
Born Giovanni Battista Pamphilj or Pamphili
7 May 1574
Rome, Papal States
Died 7 January 1655 (aged 80)
Rome, Papal States
Motto Allevitae sunt aquae super terram ("The waters are lifted above the earth")
Other popes named Innocent

Pope Innocent X[1] (7 May 1574 – 7 January 1655; born Giovanni Battista Pamphili), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 15 September 1644 to his death, in January 1655.[2]

Born in Rome of a family from Gubbio in Umbria who had come to Rome during the pontificate of Pope Innocent IX, Pamphili was trained as a lawyer and graduated from the Collegio Romano. He followed a conventional cursus honorum, following his uncle Girolamo Pamphili as auditor of the Rota, and like him, attaining the position of cardinal-priest of Sant'Eusebio. Before becoming pope, Pamphili served as a papal diplomat to Naples, France, and Spain.

Pamphili succeeded Pope Urban VIII (1623–44) on 15 September 1644 as Pope Innocent X, after a contentious papal conclave that featured a rivalry between French and Spanish factions.

Innocent X was one of the most politically shrewd pontiffs of the era, greatly increasing the temporal power of the Holy See. Major political events in which he was involved included the English Civil War, conflicts with French church officials over financial fraud issues, and hostilities with the Duchy of Parma related to the First War of Castro.

In theology, Innocent X issued a papal bull condemning the beliefs of Jansenism.

Biography

Early life

Giovanni Battista Pamphili was born in Rome on 7 May 1574,[3] the son of Camillo Pamphili, of the Roman Pamphili family. The family, originally from Gubbio, was directly descended from Pope Alexander VI.[4]

In 1594 he graduated from the Roman College and followed a conventional path through the ranks of the Catholic Church. He served as a consistorial lawyer in 1601, and in 1604 succeeded his uncle, Cardinal Girolamo Pamphili, as auditor of the Roman Rota, the ecclesiastical appellate tribunal. He was also a canonist of the Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary, a second tribunal.[5]

In 1623 Pope Gregory XV sent him as apostolic nuncio (ecclesiastical diplomat) to the court of the Kingdom of Naples.[6] In 1625 Pope Urban VIII sent him to accompany his nephew, Francesco Barberini, whom he had accredited as nuncio, first to France and then Spain.[7] In January 1626, Pamphili was appointed titular Latin Patriarch of Antioch.[8]

In reward for his labors, in May 1626 Giovanni Battista was made nuncio to the court of Philip IV of Spain.[8] The position led to a lifelong association with the Spaniards which was of great use during the papal conclave of 1644. He was created Cardinal in pectore in 1627 and published in 1629.

Papacy

Election

The 1644 conclave for the election of a successor to Pope Urban VIII was long and contentious, lasting from 9 August to 15 September. A large French faction led by Urban VIII's nephews objected to the Spanish candidate, as an enemy of Cardinal Mazarin, who guided French policy. They put up their own candidate (Giulio Cesare Sacchetti) but could not establish enough support for him and agreed to Cardinal Pamphili as an acceptable compromise, though he had served as legate to Spain.[9] Mazarin, bearing the French veto of Pamphili, arrived too late, and the election was accomplished.[10]

Relations with France

Pamphili chose to be called Innocent X. Soon after his accession he initiated legal action against the Barberini family for misappropriation of public funds. The brothers Francesco Barberini, Antonio Barberini and Taddeo Barberini fled to Paris, where they found a powerful protector in Cardinal Mazarin.[11] Innocent X confiscated their property, and on 19 February 1646, issued a papal bull decreeing that all cardinals who might leave the Papal States for six months without express papal permission would be deprived of their benefices and eventually of their cardinalate itself. The French Parlement of Paris declared the papal ordinance void in France, but Innocent X did not yield until Mazarin prepared to send troops to Italy. Henceforth the papal policy towards France became more friendly, and somewhat later the Barberini were rehabilitated when the son of Taddeo Barberini, Maffeo Barberini, married Olimpia Giustiniani, a niece of Innocent X.

In 1653, Innocent X, with the Cum occasione papal bull, condemned five propositions of Jansenius's Augustinus,[12] as heretical and close to Lutheranism. This led to the formulary controversy, Blaise Pascal's writing of the Lettres Provinciales, and finally to the razing of the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal and the subsequent dissolving of its community.

Relations with Parma

The death of Pope Urban VIII is said to have been hastened by his chagrin at the result of the First War of Castro, a war he had undertaken against Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma. Hostilities between the papacy and the Duchy of Parma resumed in 1649, and forces loyal to Pope Innocent X destroyed the city of Castro on 2 September 1649.[4]

Innocent X objected to the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia, against which his nuncio, Fabio Chigi, protested in vain. In 1650 Innocent X issued the papal brief Zelo Domus Dei[13] against the Peace of Westphalia, and backdated it to 1648 in order to preserve potential claims for confiscated land and property.[14] The protests were ignored by the European powers.

Wars of the Three Kingdoms

During the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–53) (the Irish component of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms), Innocent X strongly supported the independent Confederate Ireland, over the objections of Mazarin and the English Queen and then queen mother, Henrietta Maria, exiled in Paris. The pope sent Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, archbishop of Fermo, as a special nuncio to Ireland. He arrived at Kilkenny with a large quantity of arms including 20,000 pounds of gunpowder, and a very large sum of money.[15] Rinuccini hoped he could discourage the Confederates from allying with Charles I and the Royalists in the English Civil War and instead encourage them towards the foundation of an independent Catholic – ruled Ireland.

At Kilkenny, Rinuccini was received with great honours, asserting in his Latin declaration that the object of his mission was to sustain the king but, above all, to rescue from pains and penalties the Catholic people of Ireland in securing the free and public exercise of the Catholic religion, and the restoration of the churches and church property. In the end, Oliver Cromwell restored Ireland to the Parliamentarian side and Rinuccini returned to Rome in 1649, after four fruitless years.

Other activities

During the papacy of Pope Urban VIII, the future Innocent X was the pope's most significant rival among the College of Cardinals. Antonio Barberini, Urban VIII's brother, was a cardinal who had begun his career with the Capuchin brothers. About 1635, at the height of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, in which the papacy was intricately involved, Cardinal Antonio commissioned Guido Reni's painting of the Archangel Michael, trampling Satan, who bears the recognizable features of Innocent X.[16] This bold political artwork still hangs in a side chapel of the Capuchin friars' Church of the Conception (Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini) in Rome. A legend related to the painting is that the dashing and high-living artist, Guido Reni, had been insulted by rumours he thought were circulated by Cardinal Pamphili.

When, a few years later, Pamphili was raised to the papacy, other Barberini relatives fled to France on embezzlement accusations. Despite this, the Capuchins held fast to their chapel altarpiece.

Innocent was responsible for raising the Colegio de Santo Tomás de Nuestra Señora del Santísimo Rosario into the rank of a university. It is now the University of Santo Tomás in Manila, the oldest existing in Asia.

In 1650, Innocent X celebrated a Jubilee. He embellished Rome with inlaid floors and bas-relief in Saint Peter's, erected Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi in Piazza Navona, the Pamphili stronghold in Rome, and ordered the construction of Palazzo Nuovo at the Campidoglio.[17]

Innocent X is also the subject of Portrait of Innocent X, a famous painting by Diego Velázquez housed in the family gallery of Palazzo Doria (Doria Pamphilj Gallery). This portrait inspired the "Screaming Pope" paintings by 20th-century painter Francis Bacon, the most famous of which is Bacon's Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X.

Innocent X has been described as irritable in his later years. In March 1654, Innocent X suddenly expelled his personal physician of eight years, Gabriel da Fonseca, after Fonseca defended a barber who had bled the Pope.[18] Fonseca claims he had been in service to the Pamphili family for over two decades, and that the Pope had regarded him not only as his physician but also as a private advisor.[19][20]

Relationship with Olimpia Maidalchini

Olimpia Maidalchini was married to Innocent X's late brother, and was believed to be his mistress because of her influence over him in matters of promotion and politics. This state of affairs was alluded to in the Encyclopædia Britannica 9th edition (1880):

"Throughout his reign the influence exercised over him by Maidalchini, his deceased brother's wife, was very great, and such as to give rise to gross scandal, for which, however, there appears to have been no adequate ground.... The avarice of his female counsellor gave to his reign a tone of oppression and sordid greed which probably it would not otherwise have shown, for personally he was not without noble and reforming impulses."

German historian Leopold von Ranke concluded that she was not Innocent X's lover.[21]

Death and legacy

In his later years, Innocent X suffered from gout, causing him intense pain and severely restricting his movements. The eighty-year-old pontiff's health began to decline in August 1654.[22] By the evening of 26 December his condition had deteriorated to the extent that the family was summoned.[23]

On 27 December, he blessed his nephew, niece, and their children, and then had a brief meeting with Cardinals Flavio Chigi and Decio Azzolino. That night he had a little rest, though his condition did not improve.[24]

On 28 December, Innocent X received the Last rites and expressed his desire to take leave of the cardinals. In anticipation of the Pope's expected death many of the cardinals had already gathered in Rome in advance of a subsequent conclave. Thirty-nine gathered at his bedside at the Quirinal Palace.

On 1 January 1655, Mass was celebrated at the pope's bedside, and the same was done on 6 January, when Innocent X also received the Viaticum for the last time. Secretary of State Chigi, who had been in attendance during the last twelve days,[25] Prefect of the Sacred Palace Bishop Scotti, and Sacristan Monsignor Altini, as well as, various attendants were present when the Pope died on the night of 6 January 1655.[26][24]

The Swiss Guard escorted Papal Camerlengo Cardinal Antonio Barberini to the Quirinal to perform the requisite rituals and Cardinal de' Medici visited with the Pope's three nephews, who were in another room. After an autopsy, the body was embalmed and the next day taken to the Vatican where it was placed on a catafalque in the Sistine Chapel. On 8 January it was transferred to St. Peter's Basilica, where the sealing of the coffin was witnessed by Cardinals Niccolò Albergati-Ludovisi, Fabio Chigi, Luigi Omodei, Pietro Vito Ottoboni, Marcello Santacroce, Baccio Aldobrandini, Cristoforo Vidman, Lorenzo Raggi, Carlo Pio di Savoia and Gualtieri, Princes Pamphili, Ludovisi and Giustiniani, and the Master of Ceremonies Fulvio Servantio. A funeral was held on 17 January.[27] Innocent's tomb is located in the Church of Sant'Agnese in Agone which he had built in 1652 adjacent to the family palace, the Palazzo Pamphili, in Rome.

Innocent X was succeeded by Pope Alexander VII who had promised Innocent X that he would build more schools in Europe.

See also

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Pope Innocent X — (Giambattista Pamfili)

Born at Rome, 6 May, 1574; died there, 7 January, 1655. His parents were Camillo Pamfili and Flaminia de Bubalis. The Pamfili resided originally at Gubbio, in Umbria, but came to Rome during the pontificate of Innocent VIII. The young man studied jurisprudence at the Collegio Romano and graduated as bachelor of laws at the age of twenty. Soon afterwards Clement VIII appointed him consistorial advocate and auditor of the Rota. Gregory XV made him nuncio at Naples. Urban VIII sent him as datary with the cardinal legate, Francesco Barberini, to France and Spain, then appointed him titular Latin Patriarch of Antioch, and nuncio at Madrid. He was created Cardinal-Priest of Sant' Eusebio on 30 August, 1626, though he did not assume the purple until 19 November, 1629. He was a member of the congregations of the Council of Trent, the Inquisition, and Jurisdiction and Immunity. On 9 August, 1644, a conclave was held at Rome for the election of a successor to Urban VIII. The conclave was a stormy one. The French faction had agreed to give their vote to no candidate who was friendly towards Spain. Cardinal Firenzola, the Spanish candidate was, therefore, rejected, being a known enemy of Cardinal Mazarin, prime minister of France. Fearing the election of an avowed enemy of France, the French party finally agreed with the Spanish party upon Pamfili, although his sympathy for Spain was well known. On 15 September he was elected, and ascended the papal throne as Innocent X.

Soon after his accession, Innocent found it necessary to take legal action against the Barberini for misappropriation of public moneys. To escape punishment Antonio and Francesco Barberini fled to Paris, where they found a powerful protector in Mazarin. Innocent confiscated their property, and on 19 February, 1646, issued a Bull ordaining that all cardinals who had left or should leave the Ecclesiastical States without papal permission and should not return within six months, should be deprived of their ecclesiastical benefices and eventually of the cardinalate itself. The French Parliament declared the papal ordinances null and void, but the pope did not yield until Mazarin prepared to send troops to Italy to invade the Ecclesiastical States. Henceforth the papal policy towards France became more friendly, and somewhat later the Barberini were rehabilitated. But when in 1652 Cardinal Retz was arrested by Mazarin, Innocent solemnly protested against this act of violence committed against a cardinal, and protected Retz after his escape in 1654. In Italy Innocent had occasion to assert his authority as suzerain over Duke Ranuccio II of Parma who refused to redeem the bonds (monti) of the Farnesi from the Roman creditors, as had been stipulated in the Treaty of Venice on 31 March, 1644. The duke, moreover, refused to recognize Cristoforo Guarda, whom the pope had appointed Bishop of Castro. When, therefore, the new bishop was murdered while on his way to take possession of his see, Innocent held Ranuccio responsible for the crime. The pope took possession of Castro, razed it to the ground and transferred the episcopal see to Acquapendente. The duke was forced to resign the administration of his district to the pope, who undertook to satisfy the creditors. The papal relations with Venice, which had been highly strained during the pontificate of Urban VIII, became very friendly during Innocent's reign. Innocent aided the Venetians financially against the Turks in the struggle for Candia, while the Venetians on their part allowed Innocent free scope in filling the vacant episcopal sees in their territory, a right which they had previously claimed for themselves. In Portugal the popular insurrection of 1640 had led to the secession of that country from Spain, and to the election of Juan IV of Braganza as King of Portugal. Both Urban VIII and Innocent X, in deference to Spain, refused to acknowledge the new king and withheld their approbation from the bishops nominated by him. Thus it happened that towards the end of Innocent's pontificate there was only one bishop in the whole of Portugal. On 26 November, 1648, Innocent issued the famous Bull "Zelo domus Dei", in which he declares as null and void those articles of the Peace of Westphalia which were detrimental to the Catholic religion. In his Bull "Cum occasione", issued on 31 May, 1653. he condemned five propositions taken from the "Augustinus" of Jansenius, thus giving the impulse to the great Jansenist controversy in France.

Innocent X was a lover of justice and his life was blameless; he was, however, often irresolute and suspicious. The great blemish in his pontificate was his dependence on Donna Olimpia Maidalchini, the wife of his deceased brother. For a short time her influence had to yield to that of the youthful Camillo Astalli, a distant relative of the pope, whom Innocent raised to the cardinalate. But the pope seemed to be unable to get along without her, and at her instance Astalli was deprived of the purple and removed from the Vatican. The accusation, made by Gualdus (Leti) in his "Vita di Donna Olimpia Maidalchini" (1666), that Innocent's relation to her was immoral, has been rejected as slanderous by all reputable historians.

CIAMPI, Innocenzo X Pamfili e la sua corte (Imola, 1878); FRIEDENSBURG, Regesten zur deutschen Geschichte aus der Zeit des Pontifikats Innocenz X in Quellen und Forschungen, edited by the Prussian Historical Institute in Rome, V (1902), VI (1903); RANKE, Die römischen Päpste, tr. FOSTER, II (London, 1906), 321-9; BAROZZI E BERCHET, Relazioni degli stati Europei lette al senato dagli Ambasciatori Veneti nel secolo decimosettimo, Serie III: Italia, Relazioni di Roma, II (Venice, 1878), 43-161; PALATIUS, Gesta Pontificum Romanorum, IV (Venice. 1688), 571-94.

References

  1. Back to citation Latin: Innocentius X; Italian: Innocenzo X
  2. Back to citation Dictionnaire Général pour la maîtrise de la langue française la culture classique et contemporaine. Larousse. 1993. p. 812. ISBN 978-2-03-320300-9.
  3. Back to citation Russell, Susan (2017). "A Taste for Landscape: Innocent X and Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona". In Burke, Jill (ed.). Art and Identity in Early Modern Rome. Taylor & Francis. p. 155. ISBN 9781351575706.
  4. Back to citation occurrence 4.0 Back to citation occurrence 4.1 Williams, George L. (2004). Papal Genealogy: The Families and Descendants of the Popes. McFarland. p. 109. ISBN 978-0786420711. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  5. Back to citation "Miranda, Salvador. 'Pamphilj, Giambattista (1574–1655)', The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church". Archived from the original on 2015-04-30. Retrieved 2016-06-12.
  6. Back to citation Vergil and the Pamphili Family in Piazza Navona, Rome, Igrid Rowland, A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and its Tradition, Ed. Joseph Farrell and Michael C.J. Putnam, (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010), 253.
  7. Back to citation Boutry, Philippe. "Innocent X", The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, ed. Philippe Levillain, (Routledge, 2002), 801.
  8. Back to citation occurrence 8.0 Back to citation occurrence 8.1 Ott 1910, p. 20: "Urban VIII... appointed him titular Latin Patriarch of Antioch, and nuncio at Madrid."
  9. Back to citation History of the popes; their church and state (Volume III) by Leopold von Ranke (2009, Wellesley College Library)
  10. Back to citation "Miranda, Salvador. 'Conclave of August 9 to September 15, 1644', The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church".
  11. Back to citation George L. Williams, Popal Genealogy: The Families And Descendants Of The Popes, (McFarland & Co., 1998), 109.
  12. Back to citation "Jansenism", Raymond A. Blacketer, The New Westminster Dictionary of Church History: The Early, Medieval, and Reformation Era, Ed. Robert Benedetto, (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 348.
  13. Back to citation Psalms 69:9, "For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me."
  14. Back to citation "Ryan, E.A., 'Catholics and the Peace of Westphalia'" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-05-16.
  15. Back to citation "con somme cospicue di pecunia ed altre munizioni", G. Alazzi, Nunciatura in Irlanda di Monsignor Gio. Batista Rinuccini (Florence) 1844, preface (p. vi) to the publication of Rinucci's official letters: see Giovanni Battista Rinuccini.
  16. Back to citation "Guido Reni and Innocent X in the painting of San Michele Arcangelo". 18 April 2023.
  17. Back to citation "Pope Innocent X", The Met
  18. Back to citation Novoa, James William Nelson (2015). "Gabriel da Fonseca. A New Christian doctor in Bernini's Rome". Humanismo e Ciência: Antiguidade e Renascimento: 227–248.
  19. Back to citation Novoa, James William Nelson. "Medicine, learning and Self Representation in seventeenth century Italy" (PDF). Humanismo, Diáspora e Ciência. Universidade de Lisboa: 213–232.
  20. Back to citation Correia, Arlindo N.M. (2006). "Gabriel da Fonseca". Retrieved 18 February 2024.
  21. Back to citation Williams, George L. (2004). Papal Genealogy: The Families and Descendants of the Popes. McFarland & Co. p. 110
  22. Back to citation "Pope Innocent X: Proceedings of the Conclave that led to his election". Pickle Publishing. 2005. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
  23. Back to citation Priorato, Historia del Ministerio del Cardinale Giulio Mazarino, 406–409
  24. Back to citation occurrence 24.0 Back to citation occurrence 24.1 John Paul Adams (14 March 2016). "Sede Vacante". Retrieved 7 March 2022.
  25. Back to citation Francesco Sforza Pallavicini, Della vita di Alessandro VII, Lib. II capo xiii (Prato Giachetti 1839), pp. 209–212.
  26. Back to citation V. Forcella, Inscrizioni delle chiese di Roma IX (Roma: Ludovico Cecchini 1877), p. 275, no. 559
  27. Back to citation Adams, John Paul. "Sede Vacante January 7, 1655 – April 7, 1655", California State University Northridge

Bibliography

Further reading

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