NICHOLAS IV, Pope. - Girolamo, born of a humble family at Lisciano near Ascoli Piceno, entered the Friars Minor at a very young age and held various offices among them. Appointed provincial of Dalmatia by St. Bonaventure in 1272, he was immediately charged by Gregory X, together with three companions, with conducting the negotiations for the reunion of the Eastern Church at the court of Michael VIII Palaiologos, emperor of Constantinople.

When St. Bonaventure died in the meantime, Friar Girolamo was elected to succeed him as minister general (20 May 1274) and at Lyons on 24 June, in full Council, he gave an account of the accomplished union with the East. Employed in missions of peace, he was created cardinal of St. Pudentiana by Nicholas III (12 March 1278); on the death of Honorius IV, after ten months of interregnum, during which Friar Girolamo worked courageously to bring the election of the successor to completion, he himself was elected on 22 February 1288 with the name of N. IV. He labored with great fervor for the missions among the Mongols in Persia and among the Chinese and the Tartars and for the reunion of the Catholic Church with the dissidents of the East. He also attempted to check with his own armed forces the invasion of the Mamluks of Egypt against what remained of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but he could not prevent the fall of St. John of Acre, the last bulwark of Christendom (1291). Appointed senator of Rome by the Romans, he took care to establish peace in Rome, trusting for this especially in Giovanni Colonna. He crowned Charles II of Anjou at Rieti (29 May 1289), granting him the diploma of investiture, and taking care not to favor the factionalism of the Guelphs. At Orvieto he laid the first stone of the Cathedral; at Rome he built a palace at St. Mary Major and resided there; through his care that Basilica was adorned with mosaics, as those of the Lateran were restored. He died at Rome on 14 April 1292; Sixtus V later erected a monument to him at St. Mary Major.

Bibliography9 works

BIBL.: H. Rubeus, Vita Nicolai Papae IV., nume primum edita, Pisa 1761; Potthast, II, pp. 1826-1915; E. Langlois, Les registres de Nicolas IV, 2 voll., Paris 1886-93; O. Schiff, Studien zur Gesch. Nicolaus IV., Berlin 1897; I. Norden, Das Papsttum und Byzanz, Berlin 1903; R. Morghen, Il card. Matteo Rosso Orsini, in Arch. della Soc. rom. di stor. patria, 46 (1923), pp. 271-372; A. Teetaert, s. v. in DThC, XI, coll. 536-41; A. Mercati, Frammento di un registro di N. IV, Rome 1931; G. Digard, Philippe le Bel et le St-Siège de 1285 à 1304, 2 voll., Paris 1936.

Pio Paschini

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Nicholas IV, Pope

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