Pietro ACCOLTI. — Son of Benedetto and brother of Bernardo, born in Florence in 1455; he was a lecturer in canon law at Pisa; then, entering the ecclesiastical career, he became an auditor of the Roman Rota (from at least 1484 until 1505, holding the position of dean of the Rota from 17 November 1500), then bishop of Ancona (from 4 April 1505), and cardinal with the title of S. Eusebio (created on 10 March 1511, held by Leo X at Ravenna).
As cardinal, he was very influential in the Curia, holding various positions (among other things, he drafted the first draft of the bull *Exsurge Domine*, with which Leo X, on 15 July 1520, condemned Luther), and held important offices: he was successively cardinal vicar (from 1505) and bishop of the suburbicarian dioceses of Albano (from 8 December 1523), Palestrina (from 20 May 1524), and Sabina (from 15 June 1524); during this same period he administered, for brief periods, the dioceses of Cadiz, Arras, Ancona, Maillezais, Cremona, and Ravenna.
V. ACCOLTI, FELICE.
Felice Peretti, who later became Pope Sixtus V. Volatile, extravagant, but beautiful, it seems that, urged on by her relatives and especially by her mother, she accepted the favors of Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, and plotted to rid herself of her husband and marry him. Peretti was in fact murdered, and in 1581 she took refuge in the house of the Orsini. Imprisoned — because it was not dared to touch the Duke of Bracciano, by then the obvious instigator of the murder — and released on the promise not to go through with that criminal marriage, she nevertheless publicly went through with it in the year 1584. When, however, Cardinal Peretti became pope, the two spouses fled to take refuge in the territory of Venice, on Lake Garda. Sixtus V did not persecute them; but Paolo Giordano Orsini died in 1585, it was said from poisoning by the Grand Duke of Florence. The woman retired to Padua in that same year, and there she was stabbed by Ludovico Orsini. She died with great courage and Christian piety.
Quadrio called her a poetess, and Mazzuchelli dedicated an article to her; but she gave poetry only its subject (J. Webster, *The Tragedy of P. L. Orsini*). Novels were also written about her, one of which, very short, circulated in hundreds of copies that are commonly found in Italian libraries, copied by scribes of the 16th and 17th centuries.