Nepotism

NEPOTISM. - Term designating the excessive favor shown by certain pontiffs toward members of their own family through the granting of ecclesiastical dignities, privileges, temporal domains or lavish revenues in the Papal State and elsewhere in Italy.

The practice, which has its root in the human inclination toward one's own relatives, also responded in certain historical moments to the need for defense against the intrigues of internal factions or foreign powers, by resorting for support to capable members of one's own family or by making them powerful for this purpose. Examples are found as early as the 10th century, and even Innocent III, austere as he was, availed himself of the influence of his family, the Conti, and in particular of his brother Richard, to restrain the commune of Rome, which was fiercely persistent in its claims against the papacy after the revolution of 1142. Dante's wrathful invective against Nicholas III, "eager to advance the Orsatti," is only too well known; but it is also true that the Pope was obeying in this a political plan of his own for the pacification and reorganization of his State and of Italy. The same must be said of Boniface VIII, whom Dante associated so tragically with Nicholas III, and who sought in his kinship cardinals and men of government to carry out his designs and combat his adversaries, particularly the Colonna.

Nepotism flourished under some of the Avignon popes and particularly under Clement V and Clement VI, who aroused Petrarch's indignation in the Epistulae sine titulo. Therefore in the Conclave of 1352, by a special capitulation, it was intended to exclude the relatives of the future pope from the Curia and from the administration of the State. However, amid the turmoil of the schism Urban VI resorted to his Prignano relatives, and Boniface IX to his Tomacelli; just as Martin V also had the support of the Colonna and their clients in the work of restoring and purifying Rome and its surroundings and in holding the condottieri in check. Once the troubles of the schism and its consequences had ceased, a group of pontiffs is seen concerning themselves with placing their own relatives in the Curia: thus Callistus III with the Borgia, summoned from Spain to Rome. With Sixtus IV a further step was taken, for he not only was lavish with his relatives the Della Rovere, Sansoni, and Basso, but favored the ambitions of Girolamo Riario to form a lordship in Romagna at the expense of the lords of the region. Nepotism then had its most clamorous expression in Alexander VI, who made his son Cesare Borgia gonfalonier of the Church, concerned himself with creating for them an eminent position to the point of forming a hereditary State for him in central Italy, which Julius II then overthrew without pity. Leo X strove to conquer the duchy of Urbino, included in the Papal States, for his nephew Lorenzo de' Medici, taking it from Francesco Maria della Rovere, and he had greater ambitions in northern

Italy. Paul III was no less than he, for he established for his son Pier Luigi a duchy at Castro, where the Farnese had their hereditary possessions, adding to it the perpetual governorship of Nepi, Ronciglione and Caprarola, and then in 1545 gave him as a fief the lordship of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, which belonged to the Holy See but were exposed to the ambitious designs of the surrounding princes. With him this form of nepotism came to an end. Paul IV took back from his nephews the Carafa all that he had granted them, when he became aware of their unworthiness. The wind of reform, by then powerful within Christendom, and the changed political conditions of Italy freed the Church from a generally deplored tendency; Pius V, with the bull Admonet nos (29 March 1567), by forbidding the investiture of papal domains, juridically prevented its return. More difficult to eradicate was what was called petty nepotism, consisting in aggrandizing one's own family with ecclesiastical and civil dignities, revenues and possessions. It took on a particular aspect with the institution of the "cardinal nephew," also called "cardinal patron," which appears in the early decades of the 16th century and assumes definitive form with Pius IV, whereby a member of the family, usually a nephew, was at the head of the pontifical secretariat and of the entire Curia, and thus arbiter of pontifical favors. The Aldobrandini, the Borghese, the Barberini, the Pamphili owe their fortunes to this; and the abuse provoked the constitution Romanum decet pontificem of Innocent XI, published by Innocent XII on 22 June 1692, by which it was intended to prevent the popes from enriching their relatives and offices and dignities reserved until then for these were abolished. With Pius VI there was a momentary revival of nepotism in favor of the Braschi, but his successors knew how to remain free of it.

Ettore Rota