INNOCENT X, Pope. - Born in Rome on 7 May 1574, died there on 7 Jan. 1655. G. B. Pamphili, a descendant of a family that had come to Rome from Gubbio at the end of the 15th century, had been educated under the direction of an uncle, who later became a cardinal, took a doctorate in both laws, was a consistorial advocate (1601), auditor of the Rota (1604), nuncio in Naples (1621-25) and in Spain (1626), cardinal (in pectore on 30 Aug. 1627, published on 19 Nov. 1629), prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Council. His election (15 Sept. 1644) represented a reaction against the Francophile tendencies of the last period of Urban VIII; nevertheless the Barberini, the latter's nephews, had a large part in it.
His accession was greeted with joy, because Pamphili had a reputation as a man learned in law and an expert politician. In reality his figure, which appears under different aspects in the admirable portrait by Velázquez, in the statue by Algardi, in the busts by Bernini, was complex. Tall and lean, olive-skinned, bald and with a sparse beard, he had a gruff appearance and a penetrating gaze; he was taciturn, suspicious, slow to decide; and yet pious, good, a lover of justice and peace. Above all he was harmed by his tendency to accumulate money and then to squander it not always appropriately, and by his undue love for his own kin. The defects of the man and the gravity of the times, in which the unity of the Catholic world was crumbling and the absolutism of princes already appeared threatening to the Church, made his pontificate neither happy nor glorious.
He was the first to create a secretary of State not belonging to his family and, after the death of Pancioli, gave the office to Fabio Chigi, the future Alexander VII, a worthy man; throughout almost the whole pontificate, however, he allowed himself to be dominated by his sister-in-law Olimpia Maidalchini, intelligent and energetic, but ambitious and of a «nauseating greed»; her ascendancy was such that there were even fables of illicit relations. First a son of hers, then her relatives held the post of «cardinal nephew», not always in agreement with the intriguing woman. I.'s reputation was also harmed by his not having noticed the forgeries of the sub-treasurer Mascambruno, whom he later, warned by Chigi, had tried and executed.
I. took care to relieve the famine with alms and supplies of grain. Having seized the occasion of the insolvency of the duke of Parma Ranuccio II Farnese and of his suspected complicity in the killing of the bishop of Castro, he had Castro occupied and destroyed (1619) and obtained that this and other fiefs should pass under the direct dominion of the Church. But he did not know how, or could not, halt the political and economic decline of the Papal State and the deficit, which grew also because of the extravagance of the Pamphili.
In the continuous struggle between Spain and France, he tried to maintain a balance, though leaning toward the former, whose predominance he judged less burdensome to the Church and to Italy. He had the Barberini, who had sided with France, tried for their malversations; but he had to be reconciled with them because of Mazarin's threats. And, moreover, he was not lavish with undue favors even to Spain: he did not consent to interference by its King in the ecclesiastical field; in the rebellion of Naples (1647-48) he offered mediation between Spain and the insurgents and disapproved, as he did the insurrection, the Spanish vendettas and breach of faith. If he did not recognize John IV as king of Portugal, it was not so much because the latter was a rebel against Spain, as because of his claims to episcopal appointments.
He confirmed Chigi as representative of the Holy See at the Congress of Westphalia and worked for peace; but he was hostile to concessions to the Protestants and, once the peace was concluded (24 Oct. 1648), protested against the articles injurious to the interests of the Church, with the brief Zelus domus meae, which, in order not to worsen the conditions of Germany, was published only on 20 Aug. 1650, backdated to 26 Nov. 1648. The brief had very little resonance; but, more than the protest, what helped the Church to regain part of the ground lost in Germany were the holding of synods, the missions, the establishment of seminaries, which I. promoted. To the spiritual progress of the Church he contributed by approving or imposing reforms of religious orders, by suppressing congregations and convents that had too few members, by celebrating, even with excessive pomp, the Jubilee of 1650, to which 700,000 pilgrims came.
He confirmed on several occasions the bull of Urban VIII against the Augustinus of Jansenius; but he did not want it to be published in Flanders with the addition of a royal decree on the assistance of the secular arm, as the king of Spain demanded in order to take occasion from it to enslave the Church. He approved the condemnation by the Holy Office of Arnauld's proposition on the unity of Peter and Paul as heads of the Church and of the doctrine of the equality of the two Apostles, as well as the prohibition of the Jansenist Catechism of Grace. And, according to the opinion of a cardinalitial Congregation, at whose sessions he frequently participated, he issued on 31 May 1653 the bull Cum occasione, which condemned as heretical five propositions of Jansenius on Grace and free will. But in the whole question he proceeded with great caution so as not to aggravate the schism.
To infidel countries he sent or favored missions, increasing the powers of Propaganda; he created a Maronite College in Ravenna; he raised the College of the Dominicans of Manila to the rank of university. In the question, bitterly debated between Dominicans and Franciscans on one side and Jesuits on the other, concerning the lawfulness of the Chinese rites, he approved the decree of Propaganda of 12 Sept. 1645, which constituted their first condemnation. In the violent conflict that broke out in Mexico between the very powerful bishop Palafox and the Jesuits, he declared himself in favor of the former, while not approving his extreme measures, and restricted the privileges of the Jesuits to the advantage of diocesan authority.
He helped Venice against the Turks in the war of Candia and thought of a league, which foundered because of the distrust of the Venetians themselves, with whom he later came into conflict over the violation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
He favored the historical studies of Sforza Pallavicini and of Rinaldi. He continued, on a smaller scale, the great building works of his predecessors: he commissioned from Bernini the decoration of the longitudinal pilasters and the mosaic pavement of the central nave of St. Peter's and the colossal equestrian statue of Constantine; from Algardi the great relief of the altar of St. Leo the Great; from Borromini the Baroque remaking of the Lateran Basilica. He had Piazza Navona laid out in the ancient form of a stadium, with the Palazzo Pamphili by Girolamo Rinaldi, the church of S. Agnese by Borromini, the monumental fountains by Bernini, while his nephew Camillo created the villa of the Janiculum with the work of Algardi. He had the Palazzo del Museo Capitolino continued by Carlo Rinaldi and the «Carceri nuove» in Via Giulia designed by Antonio del Grande «securiori ac mitiori reorum custodiae», a work at once of enlightened patronage and of humanity exceptional for those times.
The body of I., after remaining through the avarice of his relatives «in a corner, in a wretched box», received a modest burial in S. Agnese in Agone. - See plate V.
Bibliography
Giovanni Battista Picotti