Pope Alexander VII
Pope Alexander VII, born Fabio Chigi, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 7 April 1655 to his death, in May 1667.
He began his career as a vice-papal legate, and he held various diplomatic positions in the Holy See. He was ordained as a priest in 1634, and he became bishop of Nardo in 1635. He was later transferred in 1652, and he became bishop of Imola. Pope Innocent X made him secretary of state in 1651 and, in 1652, he was appointed a cardinal.
Early in his papacy, Alexander, who was seen as an anti-nepotist at the time of his election, lived simply; later, however, he gave jobs to his relatives, who eventually took over his administration. His administration worked to support the Jesuits. However, his administration's relations with France were strained due to his frictions with French diplomats.
Alexander was interested in architecture and supported various urban projects in Rome. He also wrote poetry and patronized artists who expanded the decoration of churches. His theological writings included discussions of heliocentrism and the Immaculate Conception.
Biography
Early life
Born in Siena, a member of the illustrious banking family of Chigi, son of Count Flavio Chigi-Ardenghesca, Gonfaloniere, Capitano del Popolo, and wife Laura Marsigli, and a great-grandnephew of Pope Paul V, Fabio Chigi was privately tutored and eventually received doctorates of philosophy, law, and theology from the University of Siena.Fabio's nephew Antonio created a cardinal by his uncle on 9 April 1657. The appointment was made public on 10 November 1659. He appointed his nephew Giovanni Bichi, Admiral of the Papal Navy.
Papal diplomat
In 1627 he began his apprenticeship as vice-papal legate at Ferrara, and on recommendations from two cardinals he was appointed Inquisitor of Malta.Chigi was ordained a priest in Rome in December 1634. He was appointed Referendarius utriusque signaturae, which made him a prelate and gave him the right to practice before the Roman courts. On 8 January 1635, Chigi was named Bishop of Nardò in southern Italy and consecrated on 1 July 1635 by Miguel Juan Balaguer Camarasa, Bishop of Malta. On 13 May 1652 he was transferred to the Bishopric of Imola.
Bishop Chigi was named nuncio in Cologne on 11 June 1639. There, he supported Urban VIII's condemnation of the heretical book Augustinus by Cornelius Jansen, Bishop of Ypres, in the papal bull In eminenti of 1642.
Though expected to take part in the negotiations which led in 1648 to the Peace of Westphalia, Bishop Chigi declined to deliberate with persons whom the Catholic Church considered heretics. Negotiations therefore took place in two cities, Osnabrück and Münster in Westphalia, with intermediaries travelling back and forth between the Protestant and the Catholic delegates. Chigi protested against the Treaty of Westphalia on behalf of the Papacy once the instruments were finally completed. Pope Innocent X himself stated that the Peace "is null, void, invalid, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time." The Peace ended the Thirty Years' War and established the balance of European power that lasted until the French Revolutionary Wars.
Secretary of State and Cardinal
recalled Chigi to Rome and, in December 1651, named him Secretary of State. He was created a cardinal by Innocent X in the Consistory of 19 February 1652, and on 12 March was granted the title of Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria del Popolo.Papacy
Election as pope
When Innocent X died on 7 January 1655, Cardinal Chigi was elected pope after eighty days in the conclave, on 7 April 1655, taking the name of Alexander VII, in honor of Pope Alexander III.On the morning of his election as he went to celebrate Mass before the final ballot, Chigi was greeted by his friend Luigi Omodei who, knowing that Chigi was soon to be elected, said: "At length that day has come, so desired by me, and so happy for the Church!" Chigi replied to Omodei by reciting Virgil and said: "That day I shall always recollect with grief; with reverence also for the gods so willed it". During the final ballot, Chigi had cast his vote for Giulio Cesare Sacchetti while in the accesso casting it for Giovanni Maria Battista Pallotta. Upon his election, one of the cardinals remarked: "What a singular thing! The Spaniards disinterestedly wished you to be pope; the French wished it, though they had at first excluded you; the young men chose a man already aged, and the Barberini a man who was not their own creature!"
Upon his election, he was crowned on 18 April 1655 by the Cardinal Protodeacon Gian Giacomo Teodoro Trivulzio before taking possession of the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran on the following 9 May.
One of his first acts as pope was to order Olimpia Maidalchini to return to her native town of Orvieto. Maidalchini had been a rival of sorts since Chigi's office as Secretary of State commanded much power which Maidalchini hoped to utilize for her own ends while she worked with Cardinal Decio Azzolino to try to circumvent Chigi's authority with the hopes of having Chigi either effectively sidelined or replaced.
Nepotism
The conclave believed he was strongly opposed to the nepotism that had been a feature of previous popes. In the first year of his reign, Alexander VII lived simply and forbade his relatives even to visit Rome, but in the consistory of 24 April 1656, Pope Alexander announced that his brother and nephews would be coming to assist him in Rome. His nephew, Cardinal Flavio Chigi assumed the position of cardinal-nephew. The administration was given largely into the hands of his relatives, and nepotism became entrenched as it had been in the Baroque Papacy. Cardinal Flavio began work on the Villa Chigi-Versaglia at Formello in 1664.When announcing to the cardinals in 1656 that he would summon his relatives to Rome, the pontiff asked that each cardinal provide his opinion on his suggestion. The cardinals agreed, but attached several conditions to ensure that nepotism did not run too rampant. The pope eventually received his relatives in an audience, however, the meeting was formal and his relatives were required to kneel for the entirety of the audience as the pope informed them of why they had been summoned and what was expected of them.
Urban and architectural projects in Rome
A number of pontiffs are renowned for their urban planning in the city of Rome—for example, Pope Julius II and Pope Sixtus V—but Alexander VII's numerous urban interventions were not only diverse in scope and scale but demonstrated a consistent planning and architectural vision that the glorification and embellishment of the city, ancient and modern, sacred and secular, should be governed by order and decorum.Central to Alexander's urbanism was the idea of teatro or urban theatre whereby his urban interventions became the grand settings or showpieces appropriate to the dignity of Rome and the Head of the Catholic Church. Therefore, and although the scales are vastly different, the small Santa Maria della Pace and its piazza are as much a teatro as the imposing monumental colonnade that forms St. Peter's Square in front of St. Peter's Basilica.
The various urban and architectural projects carried out during Alexander's reign were recorded in engravings by Giovanni Battista Falda and the first volume was published in 1665. The volumes were published by Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi under the title Il Nuovo Teatro delle fabriche et edificij in prospettiva di Roma moderna sotto il felice pontificato di N.S. Alessandro VII. A rival publication documenting these projects was published by Rossi's cousin Giovanni Battista de Rossi who employed the young Flemish architectural draughtsman Lieven Cruyl to produce drawings of Rome, 10 of which were published in 1666 under the title Prospectus Locorum Urbis Romae Insignium.
His preferred architect was the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini but he also gave architectural commissions to the painter and architect Pietro da Cortona. Of the three leading architects of the Roman High Baroque, only Francesco Borromini fared less well under Alexander; this may be because he thought Borromini's architectural forms wilful but also Borromini could be notoriously difficult. Nonetheless, Alexander's family heraldic emblems of the mons or mountains with stars and oak leaves, adorn Borromini's church of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza and many other works of his reign.
Alexander took a keen personal interest in his urban and architectural projects and made notes of these in his diaries. His projects in Rome included: the church and piazza at Santa Maria della Pace; the Via del Corso, Piazza Colonna and associated buildings; reworking of the Porta del Popolo, the Piazza del Popolo and Santa Maria del Popolo; St. Peter's Square, the Scala Regia and interior embellishments in the Vatican Palace and St. Peter's; Sant'Andrea al Quirinale; part of the Quirinal Palace; the Arsenal of Civitavecchia, the obelisk and elephant in Piazza della Minerva; and the Chigi Palace. The Palazzo Chigi in Rome is not to be confused with the Palazzo Chigi in S. Quirico d'Orcia in Tuscany, or the Palazzo Chigi di Formello.
Foreign relations
Malta
Before being elected as Pontiff, Chigi served as Inquisitor on the Island of Malta where he resided mostly at the Inquisitor's Palace in Birgu. At that time Malta was a fiefdom of the Knights Hospitallers of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, from which he bought one hundred slaves in 1662 for his naval squadron.Sweden
The conversion of Queen Christina of Sweden occurred during Alexander VII's reign. After her abdication the queen came to reside in Rome, where she was confirmed in her baptism by the Pope, in whom she found a generous friend and benefactor, on Christmas Day, 1655. She was described by the Pope as 'a queen without a realm, a Christian without faith, and a woman without shame.' He was also said to have accused her of being 'a woman born of a barbarian, barbarously brought up and living with barbarous thoughts', therefore indicating that their relationship might have been contentious at best.Shortly after her arrival in Rome, she quickly became the centre of Roman fashion and parties. However, following the pre-Lenten Carnival in 1656, Alexander VII quickly regretted having invited her to Rome since there existed an atmosphere of immorality which was linked to the Carnival. While the pontiff had originally hoped that Christina would become an inspiration for those considering conversion to the faith, he was dismayed that her interests were primarily political, even to the point that she helped plot the conquest of Naples with Cardinal Mazarin.