Innocent X

Giovanni Battista Pamphilj (Rome, May 6th 1574 - id. , January 7th 1655), 234e pope, of 1644 with 1655, under the name of Innocent X (in Latin Innocentius X , in Italian Innocenzo X ). " Jucunditas crucis " in the Prophecy of Saint Malachie.

Born in the patrician big family from the Pamphilj, it made studies of right to the Collegium romanum . It entered at once to the Roman Curie, where Clément VIII named it listener of the Rote Roman. Gregoire XV then employed it like Apostolic nuncio. Lastly, Urbain VIII promoted it Latin patriarch Antioche. In 1626, it accepted the bar of cardinal-priest of Sant' Eusebio.

He was elected pope the September 15th 1644, with died of Urbain VIII, the shortly after the day of the exaltation of the Holy-Cross, thanks to the support of the French clan, which refused any candidate pro-Spanish. He takes the name of Innocent X in memory of Innocent VIII which had protected the establishment from Pamfili in Rome, he is crowned the October 4th. Very quickly his/her sister-in-law, Olimpia Maidalchini, widow of her older brother, will take on him irresistible ascending whose gausser throughout all reign the French gazettes and especially the propaganda of the reformed Church go. Ambitious, avid and intrigante, it fills of itself each space of the political life and social of Rome by preceding the most important character of the Curie. Of this position, it operated with wish the facts and the people by causing many incidents and by causing more than one disappointment with the pope who always protected it.

Innocent X continued Antonio and Francesco Barberini, Barberini nephews, for their financial embezzlements. Those took refuge in France. In 1646, it fulminated a bubble ordering to the cardinals having left the Papal States without its permission to go back there under six months, fault of losing their benefit, even their bar. The Parlement of Paris cancelled the bubble, and Mazarin had to threaten to make give its troops on the Papal States to make fold Innocent X.

He denounced by the Bref Zelo domus Dei (November 26th 1648) the religious clauses of the Traité of Westphalia which, one month earlier, had put an end to the Guerre Thirty Year old. He condemned the five proposals drawn from the Augustinus of Jansenius by the bubble Cum causes (March 31st 1653).

Innocent X made build nine prisons with criteria characterized by a not very common humanity for the time. He wrote to the tsar Alexis Ier of Russia by pleading the cause of the serfs and the glèbe and by asking their stamping.

He died the January 5th 1655, Olimpia raflant all that it could in the pontifical apartments. It is told that its skin remained abandoned during three days without nobody undertaking the burial. Its very dear Olimpia refused to give the least penny for the funeral.

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