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'Pope Urban VIII' (April 1568 – July 29, 1644), born 'Maffeo Barberini', was Pope from 1623 to 1644. He was the last Pope to expand the papal territory by force of arms, and was a prominent patron of the arts and reformer of Church missions. However, the massive debts incurred during his papacy greatly weakened his successors, who were unable to maintain the Pope's longstanding political or military influence in Europe.

Contents

Early life

Papacy

Politics

Art

Later life

References

Early life

Maffeo Barberini was born in 1568 to an important Florentine family. He was educated by the Jesuits and received a doctorate of law from the University of Pisa in 1589.
In 1601, Maffeo was able to use the influence of an uncle who had become apostolic protonotary to secure an appointment by Sixtus V as papal legate to the court of King Henry IV of France. In 1604 Gregory XIV appointed him archbishop of Nazareth, although this was an honorary position as the Holy Land was under Turkish rule.
By Clement VIII he was himself made protonotary and nuncio to the French court; Paul V also employed him in a similar capacity, afterwards raising him to the cardinalate and making him the papal legate to Bologna. On 6 August 1623, he was chosen successor to Gregory XV and took the title Urban VIII.^[1]

Papacy

Urban's papacy covered twenty-one years of the Thirty Years' War and was an eventful one even by the standards of the day. He canonized Elizabeth of Portugal and Andrew Corsini and issued the Papal bull of canonization for Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier, who had been canonized by his predecessor, Gregory XV.
Despite an early friendship and encouragement for his teachings, Urban was responsible for summoning Galileo to Rome in 1633 to recant his work.
He was the last to practice nepotism on a grand scale: various members of his family were enormously enriched by him, so that it seemed to contemporaries as if he were establishing a Barberini dynasty. Urban was also a clever writer of Latin verse, and a collection of Scriptural paraphrases as well as original hymns of his composition has been frequently reprinted.
Urban VIII issued a 1624 papal bull that made smoking tobacco punishable by excommunication.^[2]
A 1638 papal bull protected the existence of Jesuit missions in South America by forbidding the enslavement of natives who joined a mission community.^[3] At the same time, Urban repealed the Jesuit monopoly on missionary work in China and Japan, opening these countries to missionaries of all orders. The Galileo Project.

Politics

Urban's military involvement was aimed less at the restoration of Catholicism in Europe than at adjusting the balance of power to favour his own independence in Italy. In 1626 the duchy of Urbino was incorporated into the papal dominions, and in 1627 when the direct male line of the Gonzagas in Mantua became extinct, he controversially favoured the succession of the Protestant Duke of Nevers against the claims of the Catholic Habsburgs.

He was the last Pope to extend the papal territory, and fortified Castelfranco Emilia on the Mantuan frontier and the castle of Sant'Angelo in Rome. Urban also established an arsenal in the Vatican and an arms factory at Tivoli, and fortified the harbour of Civitavecchia.
For the purposes of making cannon and Vatican decoration, massive bronze girders were pillaged from the portico of the Pantheon, leading to a famous quote ''quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini,'' "what the barbarians did not do, the Barberini did."

Art

In addition to these warlike activities, Urban patronized art on a grand scale. He expended vast funds to bring polymaths like Athanasius Kircher to Rome, and painters Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, architects Bernini and Borromini were commissioned to build the Palazzo Barberini, the college of the Propaganda, the Fontana del Tritone in Piazza Barberini, the Vatican ''cathedra'' and other prominent structures in the city.
Pietro da Cortona embellished the gran salon of his family palace with an apotheotic allegory of the triumph of the Barberini.
A consequence of these military and artistic endeavours was a massive increase in papal debt. Urban VIII inherited a debt of 16 million scudi, and by 1635 had increased it to 28 million. By 1640 the debt had reached 35 million scudi, consuming more than 80 percent of annual papal income in interest repayments.^[4]

Later life

Urban' death (July 29 1644) is said to have been hastened by chagrin at the result of the First War of Castro, a war he had undertaken against Odoardo Farnese, the Duke of Parma. Because of the costs incurred by the city of Rome to finance this war, Urban VIII became immensely unpopular.
On his death, the bust of Urban that lay beside the Conservator’s Palace on the Capitoline Hill was rapidly destroyed by an enraged crowd, and only a quick-thinking priest saved the sculpture of Urban belonging to the Jesuits from a similar fate.^[5]
He was succeeded by Innocent X.

References

1. Pope Urban VIII The Catholic Encyclopedia
2. Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization, , Iain, Gately, Simon & Schuster, 2001,
3. Catholic Encyclopedia Volume VII
4. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, , Eamon, Duffy, Yale University Press, 1997,
5. Ernesta Chinazzi, Sede Vacante per la morte del Papa Urbano VIII Barberini e conclave di Innocenzo X Pamfili, Rome, 1904, 13.