VITELLESCHI, GIOVANNI. — Cardinal, born at Corneto (Tarquinia) to an honorable family, in his youth he served under the condottiero Tartaglia; under Martino V he entered the Curia, where he was a notary when, on 16 April 1431, he received from Eugenio IV the bishopric of Recanati and Macerata, although in him there was more of the stuff of a man of war than of an ecclesiastic.
His first undertaking was to break the power of the turbulent lords of Vico, powerful in the Patrimony and prefects of Rome; Giacomo, the last of them, was captured, tried, and put to death in 1435. The Pope, who had taken refuge in Florence in 1434, appointed V. patriarch of Alexandria on 21 February 1435 and then also archbishop of Florence on 12 October 1435, commissioning him to suppress the rebellion of the Roman barons. The undertaking ended with the capture of Palestrina from the Colonna on 18 August 1436, an event greeted with great acclaim by the Romans. The following spring V. mercy; he then moved southward against Alfonso d’Aragona, achieving great successes, for which the Pope created him cardinal on 9 August 1437. On this occasion V. resigned the archbishopric of Florence in order to take the bishopric of Traù in commendam; but the southern campaign ended badly; V. had to take refuge in Venice in February 1438 and then go to the Pope, who sent him once more against the Roman barons. V. mercy, so that on 2 April 1439 he destroyed Zagarolo
occupied by Lorenzo Colonna; he was then the most powerful of the papal condottieri and had been invested with the office of legate. Toward the end of 1439 he was waging war in central Italy against the Trinci at Foligno and took possession of Spoleto; he then returned to Rome and dealt harshly with those who had fomented disorder. Meanwhile, however, he himself came under suspicion of having reached agreements with the Duke of Milan to the detriment of Florence, the Pope, and Francesco Sforza; Antonio da Rio, castellan of Castel S. Angelo, succeeded in taking him by surprise on 19 March 1440 and dragging him, wounded, into the Castle, where he died on 2 April. He left enormous riches, which gave rise to bitter disputes. At Tarquinia, the beautiful Palazzo that he had built there, incorporating earlier buildings into it, has recently been restored.