Pope Sixtus IV
July 21st, 1414
Such is the nature of writing a daily column about historical figures who are either magnificent, or absolute, bastards that more often than not, one could include a Pope or two.
If you include the ones who lived in the startling gothic masterpiece of the Palais des Papes in Avignon during the Great Western Schism, and Stephen II who died in 752AD before he could be consecrated, there have been 273 of them, from St. Peter to Pope Francis. Along the way, some of them have turned out to have been absolute bastards.
The Great Western Schism was resolved by the Council of Constance beginning in 1414 and as it was ultimately annulled in by a Pope who was born in that year, rather than sticking a pin into the metaphorical map of Popes and hoping you hit one of the Nazi ones, we might as well choose him. He’s as bastardish as any of them.
Francesco della Rovere was born on July 21st, 1414 in the small Italian town of Celle Ligure on the Ligurian coast some 30 kilometers west of Genoa, son of Leonardo della Rovere and Luchina Monleoni. They were a notable, yet relatively modest family and the young Francesco had political ambitions.
Although taking orders is not necessarily a hurdle to political ambition (the Papacy is after all, a remnant of the Roman pontifical political ladder), Francesco’s choice of the Franciscan Order was unusual for one with such aims. He went on to read philosophy and theology at the University of Pavia and then lecture at Padua and several other institutions.
In 1464, aged 50, he was elected Minister General of the Franciscan Order and appointed a Cardinal by Pope Paul II. A renowned theological thinker, he was noted for his dedication to matters holy rather than earthly and when Paul II died unexpectedly aged 54, Francesco’s reputation for piety singled him out as the obvious candidate to replace him
.
After election, he adopted the name Sixtus the fourth, as opposed to Fourthtus the sixth, the first Sixtus since the 5th Century and immediately, being a Pope in the 15th Century, decided that a Crusade was in order, calling one against the Turks at Smyrna, which took the region and then fizzled out.
Having satisfied the spiritual element of the Papacy by smiting a few brown people, Sixtus then turned to the important matters of Papal office by feathering his own nest and securing the legacy of his family through nepotism.
He surrounded himself with della Rovere and Riario nephews, some, but not all of which he made cardinals. The future Pope Julius II among them. One nephew, Pietro Riario, was made a cardinal, the bishop of Florence, the Patriarch of Constantinople and given some 45 other offices, which made him the richest man in Rome. Sixtus also put him in charge of foreign policy and made him the de facto ruler of Rome.
In a two-year period, Pietro spent an astonishing 200,000 gold ducats on entertaining guests. Simply calculating the amount of gold in a single ducat, this comes to a cool $42million in today’s money.
The criticism of Pietro in his day was widespread, alongside rumors that he was Sixtus’ illegitimate son and even his lover. Stefano Infessura, a humorist of the day, went as far as to call Sixtus puerorum amator et sodomita, ‘a lover of boys and a sodomite’ and whilst such sexualized political assassination wasn’t unheard of, the vitriol with which it was aimed at Sixtus, especially after his death, was either a reflection of his sexuality or a reflection of how his promotion of young men that he was very close to, was viewed at the time. When Pietro died unexpectedly in 1474, his death was viewed with some suspicion. The English Protestant John Bale, writing a century later, attributed to Sixtus "the authorisation to practice sodomy during periods of warm weather" to the "Cardinal of Santa Lucia".
Of the 34 cardinals he created during his reign, 6 were his own nephews. He married one nephew, Giovanni, to the daughter of the Duke of Urbino and from that line the Della Rovere dukes of Urbino that lasted until 1631.
He grew the territory of the Papal States and his niece's son, Cardinal Raffaele Riario, was implicit in the 1478 attempt to usurp the de Medicis in Florence and replace them with the della Roveres. Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, the main organizer of the plot, was hanged from the walls of the Florentine Palazzo della Signoria. Sixtus replied with an interdiction against the de Medicis and two years of war with Florence.
Perhaps the most famous thing Sixtus IV did was issue the Papal bull Exigit Sincerae Devotionis Affectus, in the Kingdom of Castile. Encouraged by Ferdinand of Aragon, who threatened to withdraw military support, it enabled the establishment of the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, or as it was more commonly known, the Spanish Inquisition. Although Sixtus tried to temper the excesses of Ferdinand and condemned the worst abuses enacted under its remit, he didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition to turn out quite how it did.
He warred with the Venetians, Milan and Naples, placing the former under edict in 1483.
Pope Nicholas V issued two papal bulls, Dum Diversas in 1452 and Romanus Pontifex in 1455, granting the Portuguese the rights to acquire slaves along the African coast through force or trade. These concessions were later confirmed by Pope Sixtus IV in his bull, Aeterni regis, on June 21, 1481. The “ideology of conquest” presented in these texts arguably facilitated both commerce and conversion.
In November 1476, Isabel and Fernando initiated an investigation into the rights of conquest in the Canary Islands. By spring 1478, they dispatched Juan Rejon with sixty soldiers and thirty cavalry to Gran Canaria, causing the natives to retreat inland. Pope Sixtus IV’s earlier threats to excommunicate captains or pirates who enslaved Christians, as stated in the bull Regimini Gregis of 1476, may have been intended to stress the importance of converting the natives of the Canary Islands and Guinea, establishing a clear distinction between those who converted and those who resisted. The ecclesiastical penalties were aimed at those enslaving recent converts.
Sixtus IV donated several historically significant Roman sculptures, laying the foundation for a papal art collection that would eventually become the Capitoline Museums. He also revitalized, enriched, and expanded the Vatican Library. Sixtus commissioned Regiomontanus to attempt the first sanctioned reorganization of the Julian calendar and enhanced the papal chapel choir by bringing in singers and notable composers such as Gaspar van Weerbeke, Marbrianus de Orto, and Bertrandus Vaqueras from the north.
Beyond his patronage of the arts, Sixtus was also a supporter of the sciences. Before becoming pope, he spent time at the liberal and cosmopolitan University of Padua, which enjoyed considerable independence from the Church and had a very international character.
As Pope, he issued a papal bull permitting local bishops to provide the bodies of executed criminals and unidentified corpses to physicians and artists for dissection. This access to corpses enabled the anatomist Vesalius, along with Titian’s pupil Jan Stephen van Calcar, to complete the groundbreaking medical/anatomical text De humani corporis fabrica.
In 1477, Sixtus IV issued a papal bull authorizing the establishment of Uppsala University, the first university in Sweden and all of Scandinavia. The choice of Uppsala was influenced by its historical significance as a major archbishopric since the spread of Christianity in the ninth century and its role as a longstanding regional trade hub. The bull granted the university corporate rights and included several key provisions. Notably, Uppsala University was given the same freedoms and privileges as the University of Bologna, including the right to establish the four traditional faculties of theology, law (Canon and Roman law), medicine, and philosophy, and to award bachelor’s, master’s, licentiate, and doctoral degrees. The archbishop of Uppsala was appointed as the university’s Chancellor, responsible for upholding the rights and privileges of the university and its members.
Even Infessura had to admit that Sixtus IV should be admired as a civic patron in Rome. The dedicatory inscription in Melozzo da Forlì’s fresco in the Vatican Palace reads: “You gave your city temples, streets, squares, fortifications, bridges and restored the Acqua Vergine as far as the Trevi…”
In addition to restoring the aqueduct, which provided Rome with an alternative to the unhealthy river water, Sixtus IV restored or rebuilt over 30 of Rome’s dilapidated churches, including San Vitale (1475) and Santa Maria del Popolo, and added seven new ones. He sponsored the construction of the Sistine Chapel and the Ponte Sisto, the first new bridge across the Tiber since antiquity. He also initiated the building of Via Sistina (later named Borgo Sant’Angelo), a road connecting Castel Sant’Angelo to Saint Peter’s.
These efforts were part of a broader urbanization scheme aimed at integrating the Vatican Hill and Borgo with the heart of Old Rome. As part of this plan, Sixtus IV cleared long-established markets from the Campidoglio in 1477 and, in a bull of 1480, decreed the widening of streets, the first post-Roman paving, and the removal of porticoes and other impediments to free public passage.
Sixtus died on August 12th 1484 and his original tomb was destroyed in the Sack of Rome in 1527 by the mutinous troops of Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Today his remains, alongside those of his nephew, Pope Julius II, are at rest in the Basilica of St Peter’s, on the floor in front of the monument to Pope Clement X, beneath a marble tombstone.