Pope Sixtus IV
Innocent VIII | |
---|---|
Orders | |
Consecration | 25 August 1471 by Guillaume d'Estouteville |
Created cardinal | 18 September 1467 by Paul II |
Personal details | |
Born | Francesco della Rovere 21 July 1414 |
Died | 12 August 1484 Rome, Papal States | (aged 70)
Previous post(s) |
|
Coat of arms | |
Other popes named Sixtus |
Papal styles of Pope Sixtus IV | |
---|---|
His Holiness | |
Spoken style | Your Holiness |
Religious style | Holy Father |
Posthumous style | None |
Ordination history of Pope Sixtus IV | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Pope Sixtus IV (Italian: Sisto IV; born Francesco della Rovere; 21 July 1414 – 12 August 1484) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 9 August 1471 to his death, in August 1484. His accomplishments as pope included the construction of the Sistine Chapel and the creation of the Vatican Library. A patron of the arts, he brought together the group of artists who ushered the early Renaissance into Rome with the first masterpieces of the city's new artistic age.
Sixtus founded the Spanish Inquisition through the bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus (1478), and he annulled the decrees of the Council of Constance. He was noted for his nepotism and was personally involved in the infamous Pazzi conspiracy, a plot to remove the Medici family from power in Florence.[1]
Early life
Francesco was a member of Della Rovere family, a son of Leonardo della Rovere and Luchina Monleoni. He was born in Celle Ligure, a town near Savona.[2]
As a young man, Della Rovere joined the Franciscan Order, an unlikely choice for a political career, and his intellectual qualities were revealed while he was studying philosophy and theology at the University of Pavia. He went on to lecture at Padua and many other Italian universities.[3]
In 1464, Della Rovere was elected
Before his papal election, Cardinal della Rovere was renowned for his unworldliness and had written learned treatises, including On the Blood of Christ and On the Power of God.[4]
His reputation for piety was one of the deciding factors that prompted the College of Cardinals to elect him Pope upon the unexpected death of Paul II at the age of fifty-four.[5]
Papacy
Upon being elected Pope, Della Rovere adopted the name Sixtus, which had not been used since the 5th century. One of his first acts was to declare a renewed
Nepotism
Sixtus IV sought to strengthen his position by surrounding himself with relatives and friends. In the fresco by
His nephew, Pietro Riario, possibly also benefited from his alleged nepotism. He was successively promoted to be a cardinal, the bishop of Florence, the Patriarch of Constantinople and given some 45 additional benefices. Pietro became one of the richest men in Rome and was entrusted with Pope Sixtus IV's foreign policy, in addition to being given an unofficial post as the de facto ruler of Rome. He reportedly spent 200,000 gold ducats on foodstuffs and festivities during two years in office.[8] Pietro died prematurely in 1474.[9] Chroniclers of his life seem to regard his death as unnatural and thus connect his alleged grandiose spending habits and the impression they left on his contemporaries as causal.[10]
Criticisms of
The secular fortunes of the Della Rovere family began when Sixtus invested his nephew
In his territorial aggrandizement of the
However, Infessura had partisan allegiances to the
Foreign policy
Sixtus continued a dispute with King
On 1 November 1478, Sixtus published the papal bull Exigit Sincerae Devotionis Affectus through which the Spanish Inquisition was established in the Kingdom of Castile.[20] Sixtus consented under political pressure from Ferdinand of Aragon,[20] who threatened to withhold military support from his kingdom of Sicily. Nevertheless, Sixtus IV quarrelled over protocol and prerogatives of jurisdiction; he was unhappy with the excesses of the Inquisition and condemned the most flagrant abuses in 1482.[21]
As a temporal prince who constructed stout fortresses in the
For refusing to desist from the very hostilities that he himself had instigated and for being a dangerous rival to Della Rovere dynastic ambitions in the Marche, Sixtus placed Venice under interdict in 1483. He also lined the coffers of the state by unscrupulously selling high offices and privileges.[6]
In ecclesiastical affairs, Sixtus promoted the dogma of the
Slavery
The two papal bulls issued by Pope Nicholas V, Dum Diversas of 1452 and Romanus Pontifex of 1455, had effectively given the Portuguese the rights to acquire slaves along the African Coast by force or trade. Those concessions were confirmed by Sixtus in his own bull, Aeterni regis, of 21 June 1481.[23] Arguably the "ideology of conquest" expounded in those texts became the means by which commerce and conversion were facilitated.[24]
In November 1476, Isabel and Fernando ordered an investigation into rights of conquest in the Canary Islands, and in the spring of 1478, they sent Juan Rejon with sixty soldiers and thirty cavalry to the Grand Canary, where the natives retreated inland.[citation needed] Sixtus's earlier threats to excommunicate all captains or pirates who enslaved Christians in the bull Regimini Gregis of 1476 could have been intended to emphasise the need to convert the natives of the Canary Islands and Guinea and establish a clear difference in status between those who had converted and those who resisted.[25] The ecclesiastical penalties were directed towards those who were enslaving the recent converts.[26]
Princely patronage
As a civic patron in Rome, even the anti-papal chronicler Stefano Infessura agreed that Sixtus should be admired. The dedicatory inscription in the fresco by
In addition to restoring the aqueduct that provided Rome an alternative to the river water, which had made the city famously unhealthy, he restored or rebuilt over 30 of Rome's dilapidated churches such as
All of that was done to facilitate the integration of the Vatican Hill and Borgo with the heart of Old Rome. That was part of a broader scheme of urbanization carried out under Sixtus IV, who swept the long-established markets from the Campidoglio in 1477 and decreed in a bull of 1480 the widening of streets and the first post-Roman paving, the removal of porticoes and other post-classical impediments to free public passage.[citation needed]
At the beginning of his papacy, in 1471, Sixtus had donated several historically important Roman sculptures that founded a papal collection of art, which would eventually develop into the collections of the Capitoline Museums. He also refounded, enriched and enlarged the Vatican Library.[7] He had Regiomontanus attempt the first sanctioned reorganisation of the Julian calendar and increased the size and prestige of the papal chapel choir, bringing singers and some prominent composers (Gaspar van Weerbeke, Marbrianus de Orto and Bertrandus Vaqueras) to Rome from the north.[citation needed]
In addition to being a patron of the arts, Sixtus was a patron of the sciences. Before he became pope, he had spent time at the very liberal and cosmopolitan University of Padua, which maintained considerable independence from the Church and had a very international character.[27][citation needed]
As Pope, he issued a
Other activities
Consistories
The Pope created 34 cardinals in eight consistories held during his reign, among them three nephews, one grandnephew and one other relative, thus continuing the practice of nepotism that he and his successors would engage in during this period.
Canonizations and beatifications
Sixtus IV named seven new saints, with the most notable being Bonaventure (1482); he also beatified one person, John Buoni (1483).
Uppsala University
In 1477, Sixtus IV issued a
Death
This section needs additional citations for verification. (October 2021) |
Sixtus IV became ill on 8 August 1484; this illness worsened on 10 August while the pope was attending an event in Rome. He felt unwell that evening and was forced to cancel a meeting he was to hold with his cardinals the following morning. The Pope grew weaker during the night of 11 August and he was unable to sleep. Sixtus IV died the following evening – 12 August.[29]
The envoy of the Medici family summed up Sixtus' reign in the announcement to his master, "Today at 5 o'clock His Holiness Sixtus IV departed this life – may God forgive him!"[30]
Pope Sixtus's tomb was destroyed in the Sack of Rome in 1527. Today, his remains, along with the remains of his nephew Pope Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere), are interred in St. Peter's Basilica, in the floor in front of the monument to Pope Clement X. A marble tombstone marks the site.
His bronze funerary monument, now in the basement Treasury of
Cardinals
Sixtus created an unusually large number of cardinals during his pontificate (23) who were drawn from the roster of the princely houses of Italy, France and Spain, thus ensuring that many of his policies continued after his death:
|
|
Portrayals
Pope Sixtus is portrayed by
See also
Notes
- ^ Lauro Martines, April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 150–196.
- ^ "Miranda, Salvador. Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church". Archived from the original on 13 January 2018. Retrieved 29 July 2014.
- ^ a b c "Butler, Richard Urban. "Pope Sixtus IV." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912".
- ^ Martines, April Blood, p. 159
- ^ Richard P. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, New York: HarpersSanFrancisco, 1997, pp. 264–265.
- ^ a b c "Sisto IV (1414–1484)", Palazzo-Medici Riccardi Archived 10 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c Morris, Roderick Conway (10 May 2011). "Morris, Roderick Conway. "When Sixtus IV Needed a Painter", New York Times, May 10, 2011". The New York Times.
- being served with desert.
- ^ His role passed to Giuliano Della Rovere
- ISBN 9783050043142, retrieved 14 January 2023
- ^ Stefano Infessura, Diario Della città di Roma (1303–1494), Ist. St. Italiano, Tip. Forzani, Roma 1890, pp. 155–56
- ISBN 9783050043142, retrieved 14 January 2023
- Guidobaldo(Duke of Urbino 1482–1508), who, without an heir, devised the duchy on the boy.
- ^ McBrien, Lives of the Popes, p. 265.
- ^ "Palazzo della Cancelleria". Turismo Roma. 12 January 2019. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
- ^ "Sixtus IV | pope | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
- ^ Egmont Lee, Sixtus IV and Men of Letters, Rome, 1978
- ^ Giovanni Lydus, Analecta in labrum Nicolai de Clemangiis, De Corrupto Ecclesiae state. In class a: Nicolas de Clemanges, Opera Omnia, Elzevirius & Laurentius, Lugduni Batavorum 1593, p. 9)
- ^ Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes [1889], vol. II, Desclée, Roma 1911, pp. 608–611
- ^ a b Costigan 2010, p. 15.
- ^ Kamen 1997, p. 49.
- ^ "Sixtus IV". Encyclopædia Britannica. 8 August 2023.
- ^ Raiswell, p. 469; see also "Black Africans in Renaissance Europe", p. 281
- ^ Traboulay 1994, pp. 78–79.
- ^ Sued-Badillo (2007), see also O'Callaghan, pp. 287–310
- ^ "Slavery and the Catholic Church", John Francis Maxwell, p. 52, Barry Rose Publishers, 1975
- ^ "Pope Sixtus IV". obo. Retrieved 27 June 2022.
- ^ Sten Lindroth. A History of Uppsala University: 1477–1977. Almqvist & Wiksell International (1976)
- ^ "Sede Vacante 1484". 2 May 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2019.
- ^ Perie, The Triple Crown, Spring 1935 p. 26
- ^ Clarke, Stewart (10 August 2017). "Daniel Sharman and Bradley James Join Netflix's 'Medici' (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved 11 August 2017.
References
- Costigan, Lúcia Helena (2010). Schmidt, Benjamin; Klooster, Wim (eds.). Through Cracks in the Wall: Modern Inquisitions and New Christian "Letrados" in the Iberian Atlantic World. Vol. 19. Brill.
- Kamen, Henry (1997). The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. Yale University Press.
- Vincenzo Pacifici,Un carme biografico di Sisto IV del 1477, Società Tiburtina di Storia e d'Arte, Tivoli, 1921 [1](in Italian)
- "The Historical Encyclopedia of World slavery", Editor Junius P. Rodriguez, ABC-CLIO, 1997, ISBN 0-87436-885-5
- "Black Africans in Renaissance Europe", Thomas Foster Earle, K. J. P. Lowe, Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-521-81582-7
- "Christopher Columbus and the enslavement of the Amerindians in the Caribbean. (Columbus and the New World Order 1492–1992).", Sued-Badillo, Jalil, Monthly Review. Monthly Review Foundation, Inc. 1992.
- "Castile, Portugal, and the Canary Islands: Claims and Counterclaims, 1344–1479", Joseph F. O'Callaghan, 1993, pp. 287–310, Viator, Volume 24
- "Variations of Popery", Samuel Edgar D.D. Internet Archive, Ebooks and Texts.
Further reading
- Texts on Wikisource:
- "Pope Sixtus IV" in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia
- Clark, J. W., On the Vatican Library of Sixtus IV
- Marek, Miroslav. "Genealogy of Leonardo della Rovere". Genealogy.EU.[better source needed] father of Francesco della Rovere, Pope Sixtus IV
- Roberto Weiss The medals of Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484) (1961)