Pope Sixtus IV

Pope Sixtus IV (Latin: Xystus IV ; 21 July 1414 12

August 1484), born Francesco della Rovere, was Pope
from 9 August 1471 to his death in 1484. His accomplishments as pope included building the Sistine Chapel;
the group of artists that he brought together introduced
the Early Renaissance into Rome with the rst masterpieces of the citys new artistic age. He also established
the Vatican Archives. Sixtus furthered the agenda of
the Spanish Inquisition and annulled the decrees of the
Council of Constance. He was famed for his nepotism
and was personally involved in the infamous Pazzi Conspiracy.[1]

1
1.1

Some fruitless attempts were made towards unication

with the Greek Church. For the remainder of his pontificate, Sixtus turned to temporal issues and dynastic considerations.

1.3 Nepotism

Biography
Early career

Francesco was born to a family of modest means from

Liguria, Italy, the son of Leonardo della Rovere and
Luchina Monleoni. He was born in Celle Ligure, a town
near Savona.[2]
As a young man Della Rovere joined the Franciscan Order, an unlikely choice for a political career, and his
intellectual qualities were revealed while he was studying philosophy and theology at the University of Pavia.
He went on to lecture at Padua and many other Italian
universities.[3]
In 1464, Della Rovere was elected Minister General of
the Franciscan order at the age of 50. In 1467, he was appointed Cardinal by Pope Paul II with the titular church
being the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli. Before his papal election, Cardinal della Rovere was renowned for his
unworldliness and had even written learned treatises entitled On the Blood of Christ and On the Power of God.[4]
His pious reputation was one of the deciding factors that
prompted the College of Cardinals to elect him pope upon
the unexpected death of Paul II at the age of fty-four.[5]

Pope Sixtus IV appoints Platina as Prefect of the Library, by

Melozzo da Forl, accompanied by his relatives

Sixtus IV sought to strengthen his position by surrounding himself with relatives and friends. In the fresco by
Melozzo da Forl he is accompanied by his Della Rovere and Riario nephews, not all of whom were made
cardinals: the protonotary apostolic Pietro Riario (on
his right), the future Pope Julius II standing before him,
and Girolamo Riario and Giovanni della Rovere behind
the kneeling Platina, author of the rst humanist history
of the Popes.[7] His nephew Pietro Riario also beneted
1.2 Papal election
from his nepotism. Pietro became one of the richest men
Main article: Papal conclave, 1471
in Rome and was entrusted with Pope Sixtus foreign policy. However, Pietro died prematurely in 1474, and his
Upon being elected pope Della Rovere adopted the name role passed to Giuliano della Rovere.
Sixtus a name that had not been used since the 5th The secular fortunes of the Della Rovere family began
century. One of his rst acts was to declare a renewed when Sixtus invested his nephew Giovanni with the lordcrusade against the Ottoman Turks in Smyrna. How- ship of Senigallia and arranged his marriage to the daughever, after the conquest of Smyrna, the eet disbanded.[6] ter of Federico III da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino; from
1

1 BIOGRAPHY

this union came a line of Della Rovere dukes of Urbino King of Naples, normally a hereditary ally and champion
that lasted until the line expired in 1631.[8] Six of the of the papacy. The angered Italian princes allied to force
thirty-four cardinals that he created were his nephews.[9] Sixtus IV to make peace, to his great annoyance.[3] For
In his territorial aggrandizement of the Papal States, Six- refusing to desist from the very hostilities that he himself
tus nieces son Cardinal Raaele Riario, for whom the had instigated (and for being a dangerous rival to Della
Palazzo della Cancelleria was constructed, was a leader Rovere dynastic ambitions in the Marche), Sixtus placed
in the failed Pazzi conspiracy" of 1478 to assassinate Venice under interdict in 1483. He also lined the cofstate by unscrupulously selling high oces and
both Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother Giuliano and fers of the [6]
privileges.
replace them in Florence with Sixtus IVs other nephew,
Girolamo Riario. Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa In ecclesiastical aairs, Sixtus promoted the cult of the
and a main organizer of the plot, was hanged on the walls Immaculate Conception, which had been conrmed at the
of the Florentine Palazzo della Signoria. To this, Sixtus Council of Basle in 1439[6] and designated 8 December
IV replied with an interdict and two years of war with as the Feast day of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
Florence.
He formally annulled the decrees of the Council of ConAccording to the later published chronicle of the Ital- stance in 1478.
ian historian Stefano Infessura, "Diary of the City of
Rome", Sixtus was a lover of boys and sodomites awarding beneces and bishoprics in return for sexual
favours, and nominating a number of young men as cardinals; some of whom were celebrated for their good
looks.[10][11][12] However, Infessura had partisan allegiances to the Colonna and so is not considered to be
always reliable or impartial.[13] The English churchman
and protestant polemicist 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.[14] However, such accusations are
easily dismissed as anti-Catholic propaganda,[10] but did
nevertheless prompt the noted historian of the Catholic
Church, Ludwig von Pastor, to issue a rm rebuttal.[15]

1.4

Foreign policy

1.5 Slavery
The two papal bulls issued by Pope Nicholas V, Dum Diversas of 1452 and Romanus Pontifex of 1455, had effectively given the Portuguese the rights to acquire slaves
along the African coast by force or trade. These concessions were conrmed by Sixtus in his own bull, Aeterni
regis of 21 June 1481.[17] Arguably the ideology of conquest expounded in these texts became the means by
which commerce and conversion were facilitated.[18]
In November 1476 Isabel and Fernando ordered an investigation into rights of conquest in the Canary Islands, and
in the spring of 1478 they sent Juan Rejon with sixty soldiers and thirty cavalry to the Grand Canary, where the
natives retreated inland. Sixtus earlier threats to excommunicate all captains or pirates who enslaved Christians
in the bull Regimini Gregis of 1476 could have been intended to emphasise the need to convert the natives of
the Canary Islands and Guinea and establish a clear difference in status between those who had converted and
those who resisted.[19] The ecclesiastical penalties were
directed towards those who were enslaving the recent
converts.[20]

Sixtus continued a dispute with King Louis XI of France,

who upheld the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438),
according to which papal decrees needed royal assent before they could be promulgated in France.[3] This was
a cornerstone of the privileges claimed for the Gallican
Church, and could never be shifted as long as Louis XI
maneuvered to replace King Ferdinand I of Naples with
a French prince. Louis was thus in conict with the pa1.6
pacy and Sixtus could not permit it.
On 1 November 1478, Sixtus published the papal bull
Exigit Sincerae Devotionis Aectus, through which the
Spanish Inquisition was established in the Kingdom of
Castile. Sixtus consented under political pressure from
Ferdinand of Aragon, who threatened to withhold military support from his kingdom of Sicily. Nevertheless,
Sixtus IV quarrelled over protocol and prerogatives of jurisdiction, was unhappy with the excesses of the Inquisition and condemned the most agrant abuses in 1482.[16]
As a temporal prince who constructed stout fortresses in
the Papal States, he encouraged the Venetians to attack
Ferrara, which he wished to obtain for another nephew.
Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, was allied with the
Sforzas of Milan, the Medicis of Florence along with the

Princely patronage

As a civic patron in Rome, even the anti-papal chronicler

Stefano Infessura agreed that Sixtus should be admired.
The dedicatory inscription in the fresco by Melozzo da
Forl in the Vatican Palace records: You gave your city
temples, streets, squares, fortications, bridges and restored the Acqua Vergine as far as the Trevi... In addition
to restoring the aqueduct that provided Rome an alternative to the river water that had made the city famously
unhealthy, he restored or rebuilt over 30 of Romes dilapidated churches, among them San Vitale (1475) and
Santa Maria del Popolo, and added seven new ones. The
Sistine Chapel was sponsored by Sixtus IV, as was the
Ponte Sisto,[7] the Sistine Bridge the rst new bridge
across the Tiber since antiquity and the building of Via

1.7

Death

3
seums. He also re-founded, enriched and enlarged the
Vatican Library.[7] He had Regiomontanus attempt the
rst sanctioned reorganization of the Julian calendar and
increased the size and prestige of the papal chapel choir,
bringing singers and some prominent composers (Gaspar
van Weerbeke, Marbrianus de Orto, and Bertrandus Vaqueras) to Rome from the North.
In addition to being a patron of the arts, Sixtus was a
patron of the sciences. Before becoming pope, he spent
time at the then very liberal and cosmopolitan University
of Padua, which maintained considerable independence
from the Church and had a very international character.
As Pope, he issued a papal bull allowing local bishops
to give the bodies of executed criminals and unidentied
corpses to physicians and artists for dissection. It was this
access to corpses which allowed the anatomist Vesalius,
along with Titian's pupil Jan Stephen van Calcar, to complete the revolutionary medical/anatomical text De humani corporis fabrica.

1.7 Death

Sistina (later named Borgo Sant'Angelo), a road leading

from Castel Sant'Angelo to Saint Peter. All this was done
to facilitate the integration of the Vatican Hill and Borgo
with the heart of old Rome. This was part of a broader
scheme of urbanization carried out under Sixtus IV, who
swept the long-established markets from the Campidoglio
in 1477 and decreed in a bull of 1480 the widening of
streets and the rst post-Roman paving, the removal of
porticoes and other post-classical impediments to free
public passage.
Tomb of Pope Sixtus IV by Antonio del Pollaiolo

Pope Sixtus tomb was destroyed in the Sack of Rome in

1527. Today, his remains, along with the remains of his
nephew Pope Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere), are interred in St. Peters Basilica in the oor in front of the
monument to Pope Clement X. A simple marble tombstone marks the site.

Ponte Sisto, the rst bridge built at Rome since the Roman Empire

At the beginning of his papacy in 1471, Sixtus donated several historically important Roman sculptures
that founded a papal collection of art that would eventually develop into the collections of the Capitoline Mu-

His bronze funerary monument, now in the basement

Treasury of St. Peters Basilica, like a giant casket of
goldsmiths work, is by Antonio Pollaiuolo. The top of
the casket is a lifelike depiction of the Pope lying in state.
Around the sides are bas relief panels, depicting with
allegorical female gures the arts and sciences (Grammar, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Painting,
Astronomy, Philosophy, and Theology). Each gure incorporates the oak tree (rovere in Italian) symbol of
Sixtus IV. The overall program of these panels, their
beauty, complex symbolism, classical references, and arrangement relative to each other is one of the most com-

6 FURTHER READING

pelling and comprehensive illustrations of the Renais- [11] Nigel Cawthorne (1996). Sex Lives of the Popes. Prion.
p. 160.
sance worldview.

The cardinals of Sixtus IV

See also: Cardinals created by Sixtus IV

[12] Stefano Infessura, Diario della citt di Roma (1303-1494),

Ist. St. italiano, Tip. Forzani, Roma 1890, pp. 155-156
[13] Egmont Lee, Sixtus IV and Men of Letters, Rome, 1978
[14] Giovanni Lydus, Analecta in librum Nicolai de Clemangiis,
De corrupto Ecclesiae statu. In calce a: Nicolas de Clemanges, Opera omnia, Elzevirius & Laurentius, Lugduni
Batavorum 1593, p. 9)

Sixtus created an unusually large number of cardinals

during his ponticate (twenty-three), drawn from the roster of the princely houses of Italy, France and Spain; thus [15] Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes [1889], vol. II, Descle, Roma 1911, pp. 608-611
ensuring that many of his policies continued after his
death:

Portrayals

[16] Sixtus IV. Encyclopdia Britannica. Encyclopaedia

Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopdia Britannica, 2008.

[17] Raiswell, p. 469 see also Black Africans in Renaissance

Europe, P. 281

Pope Sixtus is portrayed by James Faulkner in the historical fantasy Da Vincis Demons. In this show, he is por- [18] Traboulay 1994, P. 78-79.
trayed as having an identical twin, Alessandro. Shortly
after the true Pope Sixtus, Francesco, was elected on [19] Sued-Badillo (2007, see also O'Callaghan, p. 287-310
conclave, Alessandro usurped the Holy See and had his [20] "Slavery and the Catholic Church, John Francis Maxwell,
brother locked up in Castel Sant'Angelo. The series thus
p. 52, Barry Rose Publishers, 1975
implies that many of the more unsavory parts of Sixtus
reign were really the work of his twin, out to gain power
for himself.

5 References

Notes

[1] Lauro Martines, April Blood: Florence and the Plot

Against the Medici, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003, pp. 150196.
[2] Miranda, Salvador. Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church
[3] Butler, Richard Urban. Pope Sixtus IV. The Catholic
Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton
Company, 1912. 25 Jul. 2014
[4] Martines, April Blood, p. 159
[5] Richard P. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, New York:
HarpersSanFrancisco, 1997, p.264-5.
[6] Sisto IV (1414-1484)", Palazzo-Medici Riccardi
[7] Morris, Roderick Conway. When Sixtus IV Needed a
Painter, New York Times, May 10, 2011
[8] On his premature death (1501), Giovanni entrusted his
son Francesco Maria to Federicos successor Guidobaldo
(Duke of Urbino 14821508) who, without an heir, devised the duchy on the boy.
[9] McBrien, Lives of the Popes, p. 265.
[10] Studies in the psychology of sex Havelock Ellis
Google Boeken. Books.google.com. 2007-07-30. Retrieved 2013-06-23.

Vincenzo Pacici,Un carme biograco di Sisto IV del

1477, Societ Tiburtina di Storia e d'Arte, Tivoli,
1921 (Italian)
The Historical Encyclopedia of World slavery, Editor Junius P. Rodriguez, ABC-CLIO, 1997, ISBN
0-87436-885-5
Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, Thomas
Foster Earle, K. J. P. Lowe, Cambridge University
Press, 2005, ISBN 0-521-81582-7
Christopher Columbus and the enslavement of the
Amerindians in the Caribbean. (Columbus and
the New World Order 14921992)., Sued-Badillo,
Jalil, Monthly Review. Monthly Review Foundation, Inc. 1992. HighBeam Research. 10 Aug.
2009
"Castile, Portugal, and the Canary Islands: Claims
and Counterclaims, 13441479, Joseph F.
O'Callaghan, 1993, p. 287310, Viator, Volume 24

6 Further reading
Texts on Wikisource:
"Pope Sixtus IV" in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

5
Clark, J. W., On the Vatican Library of Sixtus
IV
Short Biography
Marek, Miroslav. Genealogy of Leonardo della
Rovere. Genealogy.EU., father of Francesco della
Rovere, Pope Sixtus IV
Roberto Weiss The medals of Pope Sixtus IV (14711484) (1961)

7 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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Pope Sixtus IV Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Sixtus_IV?oldid=680628481 Contributors: AxelBoldt, Danny, XJaM, Deb,

Montrealais, Olivier, Paul Barlow, Gabbe, Sannse, Angela, JamesReyes, John K, Vargenau, Charles Matthews, Janko, Dino, Zoicon5, Timc,
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