Pope Sixtus IV

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Pope Sixtus IV : biography

21 July 1414 – 12 August 1484

In his territorial aggrandizement of the Papal States, Sixtus IV’s niece’s son Cardinal Raffaele Riario, for whom the Palazzo della Cancelleria was constructed, was a leader in the failed "Pazzi conspiracy" of 1478 to assassinate both Lorenzo de’ Medici and his brother Giuliano and replace them in Florence with Sixtus IV’s other nephew, Girolamo Riario. Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa and a main organizer of the plot, was hanged on the walls of the Florentine Palazzo della Signoria. To this, Sixtus IV replied with an interdict and two years’ of war with Florence. He also encouraged the Venetians to attack Ferrara, which he wished to obtain for another nephew. The angered Italian princes allied to force Sixtus IV to make peace, to his great annoyance.

Foreign policy

A later portrait of Sixtus IV [[Titian Uffizi]] As a temporal prince who constructed stout fortresses in the Papal States, Sixtus IV committed himself to Venice’s aggression against Ercole I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, inciting the Venetians to attack in 1482 in the so-called War of Ferrara. Their combined assault was opposed by an alliance of the Sforzas of Milan, the Medicis of Florence along with the King of Naples, normally a hereditary ally and champion of the Papacy. 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 IV placed Venice under interdict in 1483.

On 1 November 1478, Sixtus published the Papal bull Exigit Sinceras Devotionis Affectus, through which the Spanish Inquisition was established in the Kingdom of Castile. Sixtus IV consented under political pressure from Ferdinand of Aragon, who threatened to withhold military support from his kingdom of Sicily. Nevertheless, Sixtus IV quarrelled over protocol and prerogatives of jurisdiction, was unhappy with the excesses of the Inquisition and condemned the most flagrant abuses in 1482."Sixtus IV." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008.

In ecclesiastical affairs, Sixtus IV instituted 8 December as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. He formally annulled the decrees of the Council of Constance in 1478.

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. These concessions were confirmed by Sixtus in his own bull, Aeterni regi of 21 June 1481.Raiswell, p. 469 see also "Black Africans in Renaissance Europe", P. 281 Arguably the "ideology of conquest" expounded in these texts became the means by which commerce and conversion were facilitated.Traboulay 1994, P. 78-79. Sixtus’ 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.Sued-Badillo (2007, see also O’Callaghan, p. 287-310 The ecclesiastical penalties were directed towards those who were enslaving the recent converts."Slavery and the Catholic Church", John Francis Maxwell, p. 52, Barry Rose Publishers, 1975

Sexuality

Sixtus has been accused of having had male lovers, as mentioned in the diary records of 1484 of the historian Stefano Infessura.Stefano Infessura, Diario della città di Roma (1303-1494), Ist. St. italiano, Tip. Forzani, Roma 1890, pp. 155-156 Infessura called him a "lover of boys and sodomites", and suggested he awarded benefices and bishoprics in return for sexual favours and nominated a number of young men as cardinals, some of whom were celebrated for their looks (including his own nephews).

While it is indisputable that Sixtus favoured his relatives in the hope of having faithful executors of policy, as was often the practice at that time, there is less evidence of direct corruption or favouritism. The exception may perhaps be Giovanni Sclafenato, who was appointed as cardinal according to the papal epitaph on his tomb for "ingenuousness, loyalty and his other gifts of soul and body"Mario Masini and Giuseppe Portigliotti, ‘Attraverso il Rinascimento. Pier Luigi Farnese’, "Archivio di antropologia criminale", vol. XXXVIII 1917, p. 473 Scurrilous pasquinades were also said to have appeared on the statues of Rome.