FEDERICO SANSEVERINO. — Cardinal. Born in Naples around 1450 to the condottiere Roberto S., died in Rome in 1516.
Created cardinal by Innocent VIII on 3 July 1489, under the influence of Ludovico il Moro he maintained secular attitudes and continued to lead a worldly life. He participated in the 1492 conclave, in which he voted for the future Alexander VI, having received promises of substantial benefices. A follower of the fluctuating fortunes of the powerful Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, he, together with him, was a patron of the pro-French policy, even in contrast with the work of the Pope. In 1512, openly rebelling against Julius II, he was one of the four cardinals who signed the summons of the Conciliabulum of Pisa, though he did not personally attend it; instead, he actively participated in the military action that Louis XII of France had simultaneously undertaken against the Papal States. Deprived of his cardinal dignity and excommunicated, he fell prisoner to the Florentines. Leo X reinstated him in his former status after he, together with the other three, had made a public abjuration of their errors and retracted the canons of the Pisan Conciliabulum and received a suitable penance.
Under the same Pope, he was officially the protector of France, whose interests he safeguarded. Of lavish lifestyle, he accumulated the prebends of various bishoprics and canonries and was considered one of the richest cardinals of the curia.