NEREO E ACHILLEO, SANTI, MARTIRI

Northern. Nor was Paul III inferior to him, for he established a duchy at Castro for his son Pier Luigi, where the Farnese had their hereditary possessions, adding to it the perpetual governorship of Nepi, Ronciglione and Caprarola, and then in 1545 gave him in 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 ends. Paul IV took away from his Carafa nephews what he had granted them when he realised their unworthiness. The reforming spirit now 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), forbade the investiture of papal fiefs, thus legally preventing its recurrence. More difficult to uproot was what was called petty nepotism, consisting in enriching 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 padrone’, which appears in the early 16th century and assumes a definitive form under Pius IV, whereby a member of the family, usually a nephew, was at the head of the papal secretariat and of the entire Curia, thus the arbiter of papal favours. The Aldobrandini, Borghese, Barberini and Pamphili fortunes stem from this; and the abuse provoked the constitution Romanum decet pontificem of Innocent XI, published by Innocent XII on 22 June 1692, by which popes were forbidden to enrich their relatives and offices and dignities hitherto reserved for them were abolished. With Pius VI there was a momentary flourishing of nepotism in favour of the Braschi, but his successors knew how to keep themselves free from II.