Ippolito de' Medici

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Ippolito de' Medici
Giuliano de' Medici
MotherPacifica Brandano

Ippolito de' Medici (March 1511

out of wedlock to his mistress
Pacifica Brandano.

Biography

Ippolito was born in Urbino. His father died when he was only five (1516), and he was subsequently raised by his uncle Pope Leo X and his cousin Giulio de' Medici.

When Giulio was elected pope as

Papal Legate in Perugia.[5]

Portrait of Ippolito de Medici in a Hungarian Costume by Titian (1532-33)

On 12 August 1529, Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici was one of the three Cardinal Legates who met Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at Genoa with the purpose of conducting him in state to his coronation as Emperor in Bologna.[6] In Bologna, he participated in the ceremonies of the coronation.[7]

On 15 February 1530, Pope Clement granted Cardinal Ippolito a ⅓ share in the annual papal income from the town and territory of Chiusi for his lifetime.[8]

Ippolito was sent to Hungary in the spring of 1532 as Papal Legate,[9] departing from Rome on 8 July, according to the diaries of the Italian literatus Pietro Aretino.[10] He was in Regensburg by 12 August.[11] There he demonstrated a talent for soldiering,[12] leading 8000 Hungarian soldiers against the Ottoman Turks, though the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was unwilling to move forward so late in the season, and the Emperor Charles V only had sufficient forces for defense, not offence. When the Emperor returned to Italy early in the next year, Cardinal Ippolito followed him.[13]

On 3 July 1532, Cardinal Ippolito was named Vice-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church, the most lucrative office in the

Roman Curia.[14] Along with that post he was transferred to the Titular church of San Lorenzo in Damaso.[15]

He was a friend to, and possibly had a liaison with,[citation needed][16] Giulia Gonzaga, the Countess of Fondi. He loved Catherine de' Medici, but they never married. Alessandro de' Medici once caught him and Catherine de' Medici in a private embrace. However, when he was sent away as a Cardinal, they weren't allowed to see each other any longer. Some theories suggest that the reason Clement made Ippolito Cardinal was to keep him and Catherine de' Medici apart.[citation needed] By 24 April 1531, Catherine had been promised to Henry, the son of King Francis I of France, in a draft contract of marriage.[17] Catherine was 11, and Cardinal Ippolito was 21.

Ippolito's cousin, Pope Clement, died on 25 September 1534. The

Conclave elected Cardinal Alessandro Farnese on 12 October and he chose the name Paul III. In 1535, free of his cousin's influence, Cardinal Ippolito acted as Florentine ambassador to Emperor Charles V, happily conveying complaints against the administration of Alessandro de' Medici. Suffering from a low-grade fever for eight days, Ippolito died from malaria in Itri, in southern Lazio,[18] although there were rumors that he had been poisoned either by Alessandro de' Medici,[19] whose abuses he was intending to denounce, or by Pope Paul III, who aimed to acquire Ippolito's lucrative benefices for his own nephews.[citation needed][20]

During the

Medici developed a large menagerie with human zoo in the Vatican. In the 16th century, Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici had a collection of people of different races as well as exotic animals. He is reported as having a troupe of so-called Savages, speaking over twenty languages; there were also Moors, Tartars, Indians, Turks and Africans.[21]

References

  1. ^ Rebecchini, Guido (2009). "MEDICI, Ippolito de' in "Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 73"". www.treccani.it (in Italian). Retrieved 25 June 2022.
  2. ^ Sainte-Marthe, Denis de (1715). Gallia christiana (Tomus primus ed.). Paris: Imprimerie royale. p. 831. Eubel, Conradus; Gulik, Guilelmus (1923). Hierarchia catholica, Tomus 3 (second ed.). Münster: Libreria Regensbergiana. pp. 20, 126–127.
  3. ^ Salvador Miranda, The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, Medici, Ippolito de' Archived 26 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved: 2016-10-09.
  4. ^ Thomsen, p. 417.
  5. ^ Eubel, III, p. 20, n.7. L. Fiumi, "La legazione del Cardinale Ippolito de' Medici nell' Umbria", Bollettino della regia deputazione di storia patria per l'Umbria, 5 (1899), pp. 481–587.
  6. ^ Giordani, p. 4.
  7. ISBN 978-88-7794-590-7
    .
  8. ^ Eubel, III, p. 20, n.7.
  9. ^ Robert Walter Carden (1911). The life of Giorgio Vasari: a study of the later renaissance in Italy. H. Holt. pp. 18–20.
  10. ^ Baronio, Annales ecclesiastici Tomus 32, under the year 1532, §  24, p. 236.
  11. ^ Pastor, X, p. 200.
  12. ^ Cardella, IV, p. 109.
  13. ^ Cardella, p. 109.
  14. ISBN 978-0-8020-8577-1
    .
  15. ^ Cardinal Ippolito's predecessor as Vice-Chancellor, Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, had been Cardinal Priest of San Lorenzo in Damaso and Archbishop of Mondovi in Sicily. Ippolito was succeeding Colonna in all three posts. He could only be Administrator of Mondovi, however, since he was not a bishop. Eubel, III, pp. 64, 250.
  16. ISBN 9781317896876
    .
  17. ^ Knecht, p. 21.
  18. ^ Crews, p. 109.
  19. ^ Cf. James Montgomery (1835). Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal ...: Dante. Petrarch. Boccaccio. Lorenzo de' Medici [etc.] Bojardo. Berni. Ariosto. Machiavelli. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman. pp. 188–189.
  20. ISBN 9780802085771
    .
  21. ISBN 0-252-06762-2

Bibliography

External links
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