NICCOLÒ III, POPE. — Giovanni Gaetano, son of Matteo Rosso Orsini and Perna Caetani, cardinal deacon of S. Nicola in Carcere. Born in the second decade of the 13th century, he was elected pope on 25 November 1277 at Viterbo, as successor to Giovanni XXI. He set out to uphold the authority of the Roman Church, keeping it above the opposing factions that were tearing apart the Italian cities, and aimed to pursue a national policy in order to bring order and peace to the entire peninsula.
Since the interference of Carlo d’Angiò was a cause of rivalry, he arranged for the vicariate of Tuscany, which Carlo held in the name of the Empire, to be taken from him and, through Cardinal Latino Malabranca, his nephew, he made peace in Florence (1280). He had Rodolfo d’Asburgo recognize the rights that the Roman Church held over Romagna and sent his nephew Bertoldo Orsini there as rector. He favored the marriage of Carlo Martello (cf. Dante, Paradiso, VIII, 49 ff.; IX, 1-12), the nephew of Carlo d’Angiò, to Clemenza, daughter of Rodolfo d’Asburgo, with the aim of eliminating every reason for jealousy between the two sovereigns. To establish a lasting order among the conflicting tendencies of the Roman families and people, he did not wish the office of senator to be renewed for King Carlo at the end of the decade; instead, he wanted it to be conferred upon himself, and decreed that in future it would be exercised by one or two senators each year (16 September 1278). He took pleasure in building both in the Vatican Basilica, where he had been archpriest, and at the Lateran, where he restored the
His favor toward his relatives in distributing ecclesiastical and civil offices among them, so as to employ them in carrying out his designs, earned him accusations of nepotism and simony, of which Dante provided a not impartial echo (Inferno, XIX). He died of apoplexy at Soriano on 22 August 1280.