Pope Clement X (1590-1676)

Sometimes Clement X is reduced to a formula: the oldest pope in history, elected for lack of a better candidate, governed by another man. The image is unfair. His reign actually condenses several major lines in the Church after the Catholic Reform: the apogee of the cardinal-nephew system, the canonization of the great saints of the Counter-Reformation, the first holiness officially recognized in the Americas, the anti-Ottoman front that Rome financed in central Europe, and the beginning of the Gallican standoff that would embitter relations between the papacy and France until the compromise of 1693 (climax in 1682 with the Declaration of the Four Articles).

The man also matters because of his trajectory. Before becoming an eighty-year-old pope, Emilio Altieri had been a diplomat seasoned in European affairs — auditor of the nunciature in Poland (1623-1627), then nuncio in Naples (1644-1652)^[9][10] — a resident bishop faithful to the spirit of Trent, and a senior Curial official for half a century. Even his late cardinalate points to a virtue: he is said to have yielded his own claim in favor of an elder brother.^[11]

Finally, Clement X asks the question, specific to so many baroque pontificates, of the distance between the holder and real power. When the pope governs little and the cardinal-nephew governs a lot, who bears responsibility for the actions of the Holy See? The Altieri case is one of the clearest in the entire modern history of the papacy. The answer is hardly in doubt: it is the holder who answers for the acts signed in his name — delegating government is not delegating responsibility. If the nephew governs badly, it was for the pope to call him to order; and when the fruits are good — five canonizations, a Jubilee, support for Poland — the merit belongs to the pontiff.

The table below summarizes the main sources used in this article, from Catholic encyclopedic notices to histories of conclaves.

An old family of Roman nobility

Emilio Bonaventura Altieri was born in Rome on July 13, 1590 (July 12 according to the current Britannica), the son of Lorenzo Altieri and the Venetian patrician Vittoria Delfino.^[12][13][14] The Altieri belonged to the ancient Roman nobility, and all the male members of the house, with one exception, had embraced the ecclesiastical state.^[15] This peculiarity - a family almost entirely given to the Church - would weigh heavily half a century later, when the pope, lacking an heir to perpetuate the name, resorted to adoption.

One of his brothers, Giambattista Altieri, was himself created cardinal in 1643. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Emilio had renounced his own claims to the cardinalate in favor of this elder brother - which would explain why he did not receive the hat until the eve of his eightieth year.^[16]

"The reason why a prelate of such eminent merit received the cardinalate so late in his life seems to be that he had waived his claims to the elevation in favour of an older brother." - The Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope Clement X", 1908^[17]

The diplomat: auditor in Poland, nuncio in Naples

Emilio Altieri's formation was first juridical and diplomatic. A doctor of law, he entered the service of the Holy See while still young. From 1623 to 1627, he served as auditor of the nunciature in Poland, discovering the Catholic kingdom of central Europe whose struggle against the Turks he would later support.^[18][19] This Polish experience was not incidental: it placed the Ottoman question within the future pope's horizon from the beginning.

Back in Italy, he was ordained priest on April 6, 1624, then consecrated bishop of Camerino on November 30, 1627.^[20][21] At the head of this diocese in the Marches, he acted as a resident pastor according to the ideal of the Council of Trent. His diplomatic career then resumed with a major mission: from 1644 to 1652, under Innocent X, he was nuncio in Naples, one of the most sensitive posts in Italy, where Spanish and papal interests intersected.^[22][23]

The Curial official and the late cardinalate

Returning to Rome, Altieri became an essential figure in ecclesiastical administration. From 1657 to 1667, he was secretary of the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, one of the busiest dicasteries of the Curia, responsible for matters concerning dioceses and religious orders.^[24] Half a century of service had made him an incomparable connoisseur of Church affairs - but, nearly eighty years old, he was still only a prelate.

It was Clement IX who finally repaired this omission: on November 29, 1669, only days before his own death, he created Emilio Altieri cardinal.^[25][26] The elevation, almost posthumous from the point of view of the pope granting it, seemed more like a final honor than a springboard. No one could have guessed that this new seventy-nine-year-old cardinal would be pope five months later - and that, out of gratitude, he would take the name Clement X in memory of the pope who had just honored him.^[27]

The death of Clement IX and the vacancy

Clement IX died on December 9, 1669, exhausted, it is said, by the failure of the defense of Candia (Crete), which had fallen into Ottoman hands. His death opened one of the longest and most disputed conclaves of the Baroque age. Convened from December 20, 1669, it did not end until April 29, 1670: about four months and ten days of enclosure (one hundred and thirty days) — the Catholic Encyclopedia's "four months and twenty days" designates the entire vacancy, counted from the death of Clement IX on December 9, 1669.^[28][29] It remains one of the longest conclaves of the seventeenth century: only that of 1691 (February 12 – July 12, five months) exceeds it in length.^[30]

French and Spanish factions in deadlock

The Sacred College was deeply divided. Of the seventy members of the Sacred College, sixty-five took part in the election: at the opening of the conclave, on December 20, 1669, then at the first scrutiny of December 21, only fifty-six cardinals were present, the others arriving as the weeks passed.^[31] The French and Spanish factions neutralized each other, each controlling about eight decisive votes, while the squadrone volante - the "flying squadron" of independent cardinals attached to the interests of the Church alone - refused to serve the crowns.^[32]

The deadlock culminated on February 10, 1670, when the Duke of Chaulnes, ambassador of France, pronounced the exclusive against Cardinal Scipione Pannocchieschi d'Elci, a candidate backed by Chigi, in a resounding intervention.^[33] No name managed to gather the two-thirds majority. After months of stalemate, the electors settled on the classic solution of exhausted conclaves.

"The Sacred College, after a long conclave, resorted to the old expedient of electing a cardinal of advanced years." - The Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope Clement X", 1908^[34]

The election of an octogenarian (April 29, 1670)

On April 29, 1670, the choice fell on Emilio Altieri. In the first scrutiny of the morning, he received only three votes out of fifty-six; in the afternoon scrutiny, he obtained twenty-one votes, immediately joined by thirty-five accessi (rallying votes) — fifty-six votes out of fifty-nine electors in all.^[35] The gap between the sixty-five cardinals who took part in the conclave and these fifty-nine voters is explained by departures through illness over those four months of enclosure and by one death: several cardinals, aged or ill, had to leave the conclave, and Cardinal d'Elci, excluded by the French veto of February 10 and then departed ill on March 24, died in mid-April (the 12th or the 13th according to the accounts), before the final scrutiny.^[36] At seventy-nine, Altieri became, and remains to this day, the oldest person ever elected pope.^[37][38]

The newly elected pope, overwhelmed by the weight of years, resisted at length: in tears in his cell, he begged the electors not to consider him, saying he was too old and unworthy of the charge; more forced than convinced, he was carried on the cardinals' arms to the Sistine, and it took another hour before he gave his consent.^[39][40] Tradition gives him a sincere protest: what could be expected from an old man? He nevertheless took the name Clement X, in homage to Clement IX, who had made him a cardinal ten days before dying.^[41][42]

A pope without nephews

The system of the cardinal-nephew (cardinale nipote) was, in the seventeenth century, a central piece of papal government: each pope entrusted a trusted relative with the effective direction of temporal affairs and the management of patronage. Clement X, however, found himself in an unusual situation: he had no nephew capable of filling the role, and his family threatened to die out for lack of a male heir, leaving only his grand-niece, Laura Caterina Altieri.^[43][44]

To save the name of the Altieri from extinction, the pope resorted to a daring legal solution: he adopted the Paluzzi degli Albertoni family and married Laura Caterina to one of its members, Gaspare Paluzzi, who from then on took the name Altieri.^[45][46]

"The Altieri belonged to the ancient Roman nobility, and as all the male offspring except one had chosen an ecclesiastical career, the pope, in order to save the name from extinction, adopted the Paluzzi, one of whom he married to Laura Caterina Altieri, sole heiress of the family." - The Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope Clement X", 1908^[47]

Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri, “cardinal padrone”

At the center of this arrangement stood Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi Altieri degli Albertoni, already a cardinal since 1664, who became the new pope's cardinal-nephew and, in fact, the true ruler of the Papal States.^[48][49] As age and gout weakened Clement X, the pope gradually delegated the administration to him, reserving to himself the properly spiritual and episcopal functions.^[50]

This transfer of power made Paluzzo Altieri one of the most powerful cardinal-padroni of the Baroque age. For contemporaries, the government of Clement X was largely the government of his cardinal-nephew - a situation that fed the criticisms of nepotism attached to the pontificate and helped prepare, after the pope's death, the anti-nepotistic reform movement carried by his successor Innocent XI.

The tax of 1674 and the diplomatic crisis

The Paluzzi government was also marked by a resounding fiscal conflict. To protect the Apostolic Chamber against abuses of the customs exemption enjoyed by ambassadors — the French envoy, the Duke of Estrées, used it widely for his own profit — the cardinal-nephew published on September 11, 1674 an edict imposing a duty of 3% on all goods entering Rome.^[51] Four diplomats — France, the Empire, Spain and Venice — closed ranks to demand a collective audience, which the cardinal-nephew refused; the Quirinal was even put in a state of defense. After months of standoff, the edict was revoked in favor of a milder edict of June 28, 1675 (agreement of July 11, 1675), and Altieri had to present apologies to those offended.^[52] The episode illustrates the financial fragility of the Holy See and the roughness of temporal government under Clement X.

The canonizations of 1671: five saints in one day

The most striking act of the pontificate was the simultaneous canonization, on April 12, 1671, of five major saints of the Catholic Reform^[53][54]:

• Cajetan of Thiene, founder of the Theatines;
• Francis Borgia, third superior general of the Society of Jesus, former Duke of Gandia;
• Philippe Benizi, propagator of the order of the Servites;
• Louis Bertrand, Dominican, apostle of New Granada;
• Rose of Lima, Peruvian Dominican tertiary.

This collective canonization was not accidental: in a single gesture, it honored the figures of the Counter-Reformation - founders of orders, missionaries and mystics - at the moment when the Church was strengthening its identity in the face of Protestantism.

"During his pontificate, he canonized Saints Cajetan, Philip Benizi, Francis Borgia, Louis Bertrand and Rose of Lima; he also beatified Pope Pius V, John of the Cross, and the Martyrs of Gorcum in Holland." - The Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope Clement X", 1908^[55]

Rose of Lima, first saint of the New World

Among these five saints, one marked the universal history of the Church: Saint Rose of Lima (1586-1617), a Dominican tertiary from Peru, became the first person born in the Americas to be canonized.^[56][57] The previous year, in 1670, Clement X had proclaimed her patroness of Lima, Peru and all the West Indies.

The canonization of a young mystic born in Lima, thousands of kilometers from Rome, carried considerable missionary meaning: it attested that holiness had taken root in the New World evangelized a century earlier, and that the Catholic Church had become, in fact, a Church of both hemispheres. For Latin America, Rose of Lima remains a tutelary figure, and her feast day (August 23) is still widely celebrated there.

The beatifications

Clement X also enriched the calendar with several important beatifications: Pope Pius V, the pope of Lepanto and the Tridentine catechism; John of the Cross, the great Carmelite mystic and doctor of the dark night; Francis Solano, a Franciscan missionary in Peru; and the nineteen Martyrs of Gorcum, religious and priests put to death by Calvinists in the Netherlands in 1572.^[58][59] Here again the choice draws a line: mysticism, reforming papacy and anti-Protestant martyrdom, the three faces of holiness Rome wished to offer as examples.

The Jubilee of 1675

In 1675, despite his great age and the gout that confined him, Clement X presided over the fifteenth Holy Year in the history of the Church.^[60] The Jubilee drew crowds of pilgrims to Rome to gain the plenary indulgence by visiting the basilicas. For an eighty-five-year-old pope, celebrating a Holy Year was as much a physical feat as a spiritual duty; it was the liturgical summit of his pontificate and one of his last great public acts.

The government of Clement X was not limited to Rome. Several decisions concerned the universal Church and testify to the broadening of the Catholic horizon in the seventeenth century.

The erection of the diocese of Quebec (1674)

On October 1, 1674, Clement X raised the apostolic vicariate of New France to the rank of diocese of Quebec, the first episcopal see of French North America directly subject to the Holy See, and confirmed Francois de Montmorency-Laval in charge, until then vicar apostolic.^[61] This decision gave New France a stable ecclesiastical structure and recognized the rooting of the Church on the banks of the Saint Lawrence. Laval, the first bishop of Quebec, would be canonized in 2014 by Pope Francis.

Russia and the Portuguese Inquisition

The pontificate was also marked by notable diplomatic gestures. The Catholic Scotsman Paul Menzies of Pitfodels, known as Menesius, envoy of Tsar Alexis to propose a league of all Christian princes against the Turks, arrived in Rome on August 18, 1673 and was received in audience on August 28: Rome answered with courtesy but without concrete commitment, refusing the Muscovite prince the sanction of the title of tsar.^[62] By the brief Cum dilecti (1674), the pope suspended the proceedings of the Portuguese Inquisition, whose abuses had been denounced — a suspension that lasted until 1681, under Innocent XI.^[63] Finally, in six consistories, Clement X created twenty cardinals, among them Pietro Francesco Orsini (in religion Vincenzo Maria), the future Benedict XIII, created at the consistory of February 22, 1672.^[64]

The beginning of the regale conflict with Louis XIV

It was under Clement X that one of the longest clashes between the papacy and the France of Louis XIV began: the quarrel over the regale. The regale was the right by which the king, at the death of a bishop, collected the revenues of the vacant see and conferred certain benefices until the installation of the new holder.^[65][66]

By the Declaration of Saint-Germain of February 10, 1673, clarified in April 1675, Louis XIV extended this right of regale to the whole kingdom, including the southern dioceses that had always been exempt.^[67] Clement X protested against this royal seizure of spiritual prerogatives, opening a conflict that would embitter Franco-Roman relations for two decades, until the compromise of 1693.

"He began with that imperious monarch the long struggle concerning the regale, i.e. the revenues of vacant dioceses and abbeys." - The Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope Clement X", 1908^[68]

The pope died before the crisis reached its climax; it would culminate under his successor Innocent XI, up to the Declaration of the Four Gallican Articles of 1682. But it was Clement X who first refused to yield to the religious absolutism of the Sun King.

Support for the Poland of John Sobieski

On the eastern front, Clement X pursued the great policy of defensive crusade against the Ottoman Empire. Knowing Poland from having served there half a century earlier, he reorganized the papal finances and granted the kingdom substantial financial aid in its fight against the Turkish invasion.^[69][70]

"Clement organized papal finances and gave Poland considerable aid against Turkish invasion." - Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Clement X"^[71]

This Roman support accompanied the first great successes of the future king John III Sobieski, victorious over the Ottomans at Khotyn in 1673 — the man who, ten years later, would save Vienna. The papacy of Clement X is thus part of the long tradition of the Holy League which, from Lepanto to the siege of Vienna, mobilized Rome against the Turkish threat.

Like all the Baroque popes, Clement X wanted to embellish the Eternal City, despite the precarious state of finances. His name remains attached to several Roman masterpieces.

The Sant'Angelo Bridge (Ponte Sant'Angelo) owes its ten statues of angels in Carrara marble, carrying the instruments of the Passion, to a commission from Clement IX (1669): Bernini designed the programme, his workshop executed it, and the work was completed under Clement X, who solemnly took possession of the newly adorned bridge in 1671.^[72] One of the most famous compositions of Baroque Rome, it transformed the access to Castel Sant'Angelo into the triumphal path of the suffering Christ.

In Saint Peter's Square, he had the second of the two fountains flanking the obelisk erected, answering Bernini's fountain with symmetry: the ensemble still gives the colonnade its majestic balance today.^[73][74] He also completed the renovation of the Palazzo Altieri, the vast family residence near the Gesu.^[75] One of Bernini's own last works was a bust of Clement X, sculpted in 1676, the year of both the pope's death and the artist's old age.^[76]

Worn down by gout, Clement X died in Rome on July 22, 1676, at the age of eighty-six, after a pontificate of six years, two months and twenty-three days.^[77][78] He was buried in Saint Peter's Basilica, beneath a tomb designed by Mattia de' Rossi, a pupil of Bernini.^[79]

His successor, Cardinal Benedetto Odescalchi, elected in September 1676 under the name Innocent XI, would make precisely the fight against nepotism and firmness toward Louis XIV the two axes of his pontificate - as if in response to the two weaknesses of the preceding reign.

The results of a transitional pontificate

Clement X was neither a great reformer nor a doctor. His reign was, in many respects, the government of a cardinal-nephew exercised in the name of an old man. Yet reducing this pontificate to its nepotism would be unjust. In six years, Clement X raised the great saints of the Counter-Reformation to the altars, consecrated the first American saint, supported Christian Europe against the Turks, stood up to the Sun King over the regale, gave French North America its first bishopric, and adorned Rome with masterpieces that still glorify Saint Peter's Square.

Transitional pope brought to the summit too late to reform, but long enough to serve, he offers the image of a conscientious pastor.^[90]

Why Clement X matters today

Clement X matters first for the history of papal institutions: his case is one of the purest examples of the cardinal-nephew system, just before Innocent XI and then, sixteen years later, the bull Romanum decet Pontificem of Innocent XII (June 22, 1692) would dismantle it.^[91] He matters for the history of universal holiness, since under his pontificate the Church recognized its first saint born in the Americas. Finally, he matters for the history of relations between Rome and modern states, because he opened, against Louis XIV, the Gallican dispute over the regale. A transition pope, certainly - but a transition through which several of the main lines of the modern Church passed.

• Pope Clement IX (1667-1669), the predecessor who created Altieri cardinal ten days before dying
• Pope Innocent XI (1676-1689), reforming successor, opponent of nepotism and of Louis XIV on the regale
• Pope Leo XI (1605), another brief pontificate of Baroque Rome, the "lightning pope"
• Pope Clement VIII (1592-1605), great pope of the Catholic Reform
• The Council of Trent (1545-1563), whose Counter-Reformation fruit was canonized in 1671
• Pope Francis, who canonized Francois de Laval in 2014, the first bishop of Quebec, whose diocese Clement X had erected