NICHOLAS 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, succeeding John XXI. He sought 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 to bring order and peace to the entire peninsula.
Since the interference of Charles of Anjou was a cause of rivalry, he ensured that Charles was stripped of the vicariate of Tuscany, which he held in the name of the Empire, and through his nephew, Cardinal Latino Malabranca, he brought peace to Florence (1280). From Rudolph of Habsburg he secured recognition of the rights that the Roman Church held over Romagna and sent his nephew Bertoldo Orsini there as rector. He encouraged the marriage between Charles Martel (cf. Dante, Paradiso, VIII, 49 ff.; IX, 1-12), Charles of Anjou’s grandson, and Clemence, daughter of Rudolph of Habsburg, in order to remove any grounds for jealousy between the two sovereigns. To establish stable order amid the conflicting tendencies of the Roman families and populace, he did not allow King Charles’ office of senator to be renewed at the end of the decade; instead, he took it upon himself and decreed that henceforth it should be held by one or two senators each year (16 September 1278). He loved to build both in the Vatican Basilica, where he had been archpriest, and at the Lateran, where he restored the patriarchal palace and rebuilt the chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum.
His favor toward his relatives in distributing ecclesiastical and civil offices, using them to execute his designs, earned him accusations of nepotism and simony, which Dante echoed with no small bias (Inferno, XIX). He died at Soriano on 22 August 1280.