Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492)

The first pope to openly recognize his children

The most scandalous fact of the pontificate is not a crime, but a break in modesty. Before entering the clergy, while he lived as a man of the world at the court of Naples, Giovanni Battista Cibo had had at least two children, Franceschetto and Teodorina.^[25][26] Popes before him had had descendants; none had displayed it. Innocent VIII publicly recognized his own children, established them, enriched them and arranged their marriages openly.^[27][28]

This cynical transparency inaugurates a style. An anonymous Latin epigram plays on his name - In-nocens, the “innocent”, against nocens, the “guilty”. (The talking statue of Pasquino was only rediscovered and installed in Rome in 1501, nine years after the death of Innocent VIII: the epigram therefore cannot be a pasquinade from the pope's lifetime.^[29])

"The Guilty fathered eight boys and as many girls: Rome will rightly be able to call him her father."

• anonymous Latin epigram, cited — without author's name — by the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)^[30]

The line is exaggerated - Innocent VIII did not have sixteen children - but it is right: with him, nepotism ceases to be a shameful weakness and becomes an assumed instrument of government. It is this shift, more than the number, that marks an epoch.^[31]

The creature of Cardinal della Rovere

The second decisive feature is the dependence of the pope on the one who had him elected. The notices agree (Catholic Encyclopedia, Britannica 1911, Treccani): the election of Cibo, like his promotion to the cardinalate in the past, was the work of Giuliano della Rovere, nephew of Sixtus IV and future Julius II.^[32][33] The Florentine ambassador judged him "a man more fit to be counselled than to counsel" and depicted him as "totally enslaved" to della Rovere.^[34]

“Innocent VIII relied on the stronger will of Cardinal della Rovere, the future Julius II."

• Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition (1911), article “Innocent VIII” (translated from: “relied on the stronger will of Cardinal della Rovere, afterwards Julius II”)^[35]

This supervision explains a lot: the weakness of Italian politics, the inconsistency of alliances, the inability to reform. A remote-controlled pope could not be a great pope. Providence, here, does not give the Church a strong pastor - but it does not therefore take away the validity of the see.^[36]

The pope of the bull on witchcraft

Finally, and despite himself, Innocent VIII went down to posterity as “the Pope of Witches”. The bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, signed three months after his election, has become one of the favorite pieces of the anti-Catholic black legend, as if he had single-handedly started the pyres of modern Europe.^[37][38] The reality, as we will see, is much more nuanced - to the point that the Catholic Encyclopedia speaks of his "much-abused Bull against witchcraft".^[39] But the damage was done: a pontifical text found itself associated, through the fault of an unscrupulous inquisitor, with the most infamous witch-hunting manual.

A Genoese between Naples and Rome

Giovanni Battista Cibo was born in Genoa in 1432.^[40][41][42] His father, Arano (Aronne) Cibo, was a prominent figure: present at the court of Naples, he would become senator of Rome under Pope Calixtus III.^[43][44] The mother, Teodorina de Mari, belongs to a family allied to the Doria, one of the great houses of the Genoese republic.^[45] Cibo is therefore not a man of the people, but a son of the Ligurian merchant patriciate, raised in the wake of power.

Much of his youth was spent in Naples, in the royal entourage, then in Rome. It was this secular period, before entering the orders, which saw him become father of Franceschetto and Teodorina.^[46] It was only after the death of his father, around 1457, that he fully embraced the clerical state - a common route among cadets from good families, for whom the Church was as much a career as a vocation.^[47]

Bishop of Savona, then cardinal

Cibo's rise was rapid and entirely curial. Paul II appointed him bishop of Savona on November 5, 1466 (consecration on January 28, 1467 and taking of possession on April 25, 1467 — hence the year 1467 given by the Britannica), then he was transferred to Molfetta in 1472.^[48][49][50] The turning point came with Sixtus IV: on May 7, 1473, on the decisive intervention of cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, Cibo was created cardinal-priest.^[51][52] He then became camerlengo of the Sacred College, a position which placed him at the heart of the pontifical administration.^[53]

Like so many prelates of his time, Cibo therefore owed his elevation not to holiness or even genius, but to a network and a protector. When Sixtus IV died in August 1484, the Genoese cardinal was an insider of the curia, conciliatory, without violent enemies - exactly the profile that a pope-maker like della Rovere could wish to bring to the throne.^[54][55]

The death of Sixtus IV and a Rome in arms

On the death of Sixtus IV (August 12, 1484), Rome descended into the customary disorder of the vacancy of the see: riots, settling of scores between the Colonna and the Orsini, houses pillaged.^[56][57] It was in this feverish city that the conclave opened. The issue is not only spiritual: it is a question of knowing which faction will control the papacy and its immense resources.

The nocturnal promises and the election of August 29, 1484

The account of the sources is consistent and overwhelming. The conclave opened on August 26 with twenty-five cardinals; on August 28, before the first ballot, the cardinals signed an electoral capitulation - a commitment supposed to bind the future pope, but which, notes the Catholic Encyclopedia, aimed above all to "safeguard the personal interests of the electors".^[58][59] Then comes the decisive night: della Rovere, the great dominator of the conclave, first diverted his votes from the Venetian Barbo to frighten the opposing camp, then, in the night of August 28, advanced Cibo as a compromise candidate, with simoniacal offers; at dawn on August 29, he already had eighteen votes for the Genoese, acclaimed at nine o'clock in the morning.^[60]

On the morning of August 29, 1484, Giovanni Battista Cibo was therefore acclaimed sovereign pontiff.^[61] The election was, by all accounts, purchased: it was one of the clearest manifestations of the electoral simony which was then poisoning the conclave - the very one that the Council of Trent, a century later, would strive to extirpate. The scenario will repeat itself, only worse, on the death of Innocent VIII, when Rodrigo Borgia will in turn buy the tiara.^[62]

Why the name “Innocent VIII”?

Cardinal Cibo chooses to reign under the name Innocent VIII, in homage to his Ligurian compatriot Innocent IV (Sinibaldo Fieschi, also Genoese).^[63] The choice is not trivial: it places the new pope in a Genoese continuity and in the memory of a great canonist of the 13th century. The irony of history would be that this name “Innocent” became, under his pen, the subject of the most biting satires of Renaissance Rome.^[64]

A City delivered to insecurity

The temporal government of Innocent VIII was weak. The Catholic Encyclopedia says it bluntly: "insecurity reigned in Rome under his reign, for lack of sufficient repression of crimes" - even if the Pope harshly punished the forgers of pontifical bulls.^[65] This police weakness, combined with the dependence on della Rovere, delivered the City to factions and brigands, and lastingly tarnished the image of the pontificate.^[66][67]

The conspiracy of the barons and the war against Ferrante (1485-1486)

The great conflict of the reign pitted the pope against the king of Naples, Ferrante of Aragon (Ferdinand I). Ferrante's harsh and fiscal power provoked the conjuration of the barons (1485), to which Innocent VIII gave his support, hoping to assert pontifical suzerainty over the kingdom.^[68][69] On October 14, 1485, he published a bull protecting L'Aquila and the rebellious barons; on November 30, 1485, he named condottiere Roberto Sanseverino gonfalonier of the Church.^[70]

The war was short-lived. The defeat of Montorio (May 1486) ruined the papal plans, and the peace of August 11, 1486 put an end to the conflict: Ferrante promised to recognize the suzerainty of the pope - promises that he systematically betrayed.^[71] From June 29, 1487, the king refused to pay the feudal census.^[72]

The excommunication of Ferrante and the appeal to France

Exasperated by the Neapolitan's perjury, Innocent VIII ordered a trial in absentia: on September 11, 1489, he pronounced the theoretical forfeiture of Ferrante, depriving him of his crown.^[73][74] But the pope did not have the military means to impose his sentence. Worse: to put pressure on him, he came to invite the king of France, Charles VIII, to intervene in Italy.^[75][76]

This appeal to France has serious consequences. It prepared the great French invasion of 1494 which would open half a century of Italian wars - a disaster that the death of Innocent VIII, in 1492, spared him from seeing. The Pope wanted to subjugate Naples; above all, he had opened the peninsula to foreign armies.^[77]

What the bull of December 5, 1484 actually says

Three months after his election, on December 5, 1484, Innocent VIII published the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus ("Desiring with supreme ardor").^[78][79] The text deplored the spread of witchcraft in Germany and confirmed the powers of two Dominican inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer (known as Institoris) and Jacob Sprenger, naming five dioceses: Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Salzburg and Bremen.^[80] The bull affirms the existence of people who “abandon themselves to demons, incubi and succubi” and harm crops, animals and men with their evil spells.^[81]

"Many people of both sexes, forgetful of their own salvation, have abandoned themselves to demons, incubi and succubi, and through their incantations have caused children to perish even in their mother's womb."

• bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, Innocent VIII, December 5, 1484^[82]

The crucial point, too often ignored, is this: the bull does not create anything new. It defines no dogma, proclaims no new doctrine, invents no procedure: it reaffirms inquisitorial powers already conferred, within the framework of a conflict of jurisdiction between restive German bishops and the inquisitors sent from Rome.^[83] Historians qualify it as a “clearly political” text, motivated by these disputes over jurisdiction.^[84]

The Malleus Maleficarum: an abusive appropriation

What gave the document its dark reputation was not its own content, but its fraudulent use. Having not obtained the support in the field that he hoped for, Heinrich Kramer compiled his theses in a manual published in Speyer in 1487, the Malleus Maleficarum ("The Witches' Hammer"), and inserted the bull as a preface - suggesting a pontifical approval of the book.^[85] But this was not the case: the pontifical letter was "not an approval of the book, but a commission given to the inquisitors"; and the "approval" of the Cologne faculty printed at the head of the Malleus is itself of contested authenticity since J. Hansen — a point on which C. S. Mackay (The Malleus Maleficarum, Cambridge University Press, 2009) departs from the received opinion, according to the review in The Medieval Review (08.04.27).^[86]

“Innocent's bull did not institute anything new."

• historical summary on the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus^[87]

Better: according to the encyclopedic syntheses, the Malleus was disavowed by the ecclesiastical authorities: the faculty of theology of Cologne is said to have condemned the work shortly after its publication, judging its procedures contrary to law and prudence — an episode whose exact authenticity and scope remain discussed by specialists.^[88] Far from being the armed wing of the Church, Kramer's manual was a deviation rejected by serious theologians of its time.

What honest history must recognize

We must hold both ends of the truth, without black legends or whitewashing. On the one hand, Innocent VIII really signed a text which gave credence to witchcraft and armed inquisitors: a Catholic does not have to deny it, nor to claim that the bull is a forgery. On the other hand, the idea that this pope would have triggered the great witch hunts is historically false: the bull created nothing, the Roman Inquisition was generally more cautious than the secular courts in the face of accusations of witchcraft, and the Malleus itself is said to have been disavowed by Catholic theologians of Cologne.^[89][90]

The great pyres of modern Europe were mainly the work of civil jurisdictions, Catholic and Protestant, in the 16th and 17th centuries - well after Innocent VIII. To reduce this complex drama to a bull of 1484 is to confuse a distant cause with direct responsibility. The part of truth - the credulity of an era, shared by all of Christendom - must not mask the falsehood of a propaganda which makes a mediocre pope the inventor of a scourge which far exceeded him. (For the complete dossier, see The witch hunt.)^[91]

The sultan's brother, hostage of Christendom

The most romantic episode of the pontificate is the Djem affair. After the death of Mehmed II, two sons fought over the Ottoman Empire; the defeated, prince Djem (Zizim), first took refuge with the knights of Rhodes (the Hospitallers), who made him a valuable political hostage.^[92][93] In March 1489, Djem was transferred to the custody of the Pope: on March 13, 1489, he made an entry into Rome solemn.^[94]

The situation is extraordinary: the sultan's brother lives captive in the heart of Christendom, under the protection of Peter's successor. As long as Innocent VIII held him, he had a unique diplomatic lever over the new sultan, Bayezid II, who feared above all seeing his rival released at the head of a Christian coalition.^[95][96]

The bargain with Bayezid II: ducats and Holy Lance

Bayezid II pays for his brother's captivity. He paid an annual payment so that Djem remained locked away from the Empire — 40,000 ducats a year according to the Britannica 1911 for the 1489 treaty concluded with the pope, 45,000 according to Treccani for the convention made with the Order of Rhodes which had kept him until then.^[97][98] The sultan added to this payment an extraordinary gift: the Holy Lance — the point (the "iron") of the spear which, according to tradition, pierced the side of Christ — solemnly received in Rome on May 31, 1492.^{[99][100][101]}

“In 1489, Innocent VIII agreed with Sultan Bayezid II to keep his fugitive brother, Prince Djem, in the Vatican in exchange for an annual payment and the gift of the Holy Lance."

• Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition (1911) (translated from: “concluded in 1489 a treaty with Bayezid II., agreeing in consideration of an annual payment of 40,000 ducats and the gift of the Holy Lance, to detain the sultan's fugitive brother Jem in close confinement in the Vatican”)^[102]

The pope devoted part of this money — 15,000 ducats per year, according to Treccani — to the lavish upkeep of his princely prisoner.^[103] The relic itself was debated in Rome: at the time of its reception, serious doubts about its authenticity were expressed, nourished by the existence of other rival lances kept at Nuremberg and Paris, and by the contested discovery of Antioch in 1098.^[104] There is something disturbing about the arrangement: the head of Christendom benefited from a bargain concluded with the great Muslim enemy. But it also had a logic: as long as Djem was in Rome, Bayezid did not attack the Christian Balkans, for fear of seeing his brother unleashed against him.^[105][106]

The Congress of 1490 and the dream of crusade

Innocent VIII did not completely give up. Taking up the ancient project of a crusade against the Turks, in 1490 he brought together a congress of Christian princes in Rome to organize an expedition.^[107][108] But the conflict with Naples, the divisions of Italy and the lack of money derailed the enterprise: the crusade never took place.^[109] The dream of unity of Christendom against Islam was shattered, like so many others, over the rivalries of the princes - and the iron of the Holy Lance remained, in Saint Peter's, the only tangible fruit of the whole affair.^[110]

The Cibo-Medici marriage (1488)

It was in his family that Innocent VIII put all his energy. The big blow was the alliance with the Medici. On January 20, 1488, his son Franceschetto Cibo married Maddalena de' Medici, daughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the master of Florence.^[111][112] For a natural son of a pope, it was a princely union; for Lorenzo, a political investment of the first order.

A child cardinal: Giovanni de' Medici, future Leo X

The reward that Lorenzo obtained is beyond imagination. In exchange for his daughter, he had the cardinal hat given to his own son, Giovanni de' Medici - aged thirteen.^[113][114] Innocent VIII created him cardinal in pectore during the consistory of March 9, 1489, his name remaining secret until his public investiture in 1492.^[115] This child would become, twenty years later, Pope Leo X - the pope under whom the Reformation of Luther would break out.

The episode says everything about an era: Roman purple, which should have crowned virtue and science, was negotiated like a dowry, in a nepotism toward his two recognized children which the English-language synthesis sums up as as lavish as it was shameless.^[116]

The venality of offices

The wars had emptied the treasury; Innocent VIII fulfilled it by an expedient that the Catholic Encyclopedia deemed “reprehensible”: the creation and sale of offices.^[117] The figures, kept by Treccani, are eloquent. In 1486, the college of piombatori (the sealers of the lead bulls) was increased to 52 places, sold 500 ducats each: immediate revenue, 26,000 ducats.^[118] In 1487, the college of apostolic secretaries increased from 6 to 30 members, for a product of 62,400 ducats.^[119][120]

"Faced with the exhaustion of finances, he resorted to the reprehensible expedient of creating new offices and granting them to the highest bidder."

• The Catholic Encyclopedia, article “Pope Innocent VIII”, 1910^[121]

The process, presented as an administrative reform, consecrated corruption: a sacred function was purchased like a pension certificate. It is precisely this trade in holy things that the Catholic reformers, then the Council of Trent, denounced as one of the plagues of the pre-Tridentine Church.^[122][123]

Should we, however, remember only the shadows of this pontificate? That would be unfair. Like all Renaissance popes, Innocent VIII was also a patron. He had the Belvedere Villa built in the Vatican, a summer residence on the hill overlooking the palace, which Mantegna decorated with frescoes (which have since disappeared); this villa would become the nucleus of the future Cortile del Belvedere.^[124][125] He had the aedicule erected for the ostension of the Holy Lance decorated by Pinturicchio, and entrusted his tomb to one of the greatest bronziers of the century, Antonio del Pollaiuolo.^[126] His musical chapel welcomed leading composers, including Josquin des Prez and Heinrich Isaac.^[127]

On doctrinal ground, his record is slim but not zero. In 1485, he canonized Leopold III of Austria, a pious margrave of the 12th century, at the request of Emperor Frederick III.^[128] In 1486-1487, he condemned thirteen of the nine hundred theses of the young philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and refused him absolution - an episode which revealed the distrust of the curie towards the intellectual daring of humanism.^[129] Pico would only be relieved of censorship by the following pope, Alexander VI.^[130] On the front of heresy, two decisions date from 1487. On the one hand, Innocent VIII confirmed the powers of Thomas de Torquemada: appointed Grand Inquisitor of Castile by Sixtus IV in 1483, he saw his office extended and then confirmed for all the kingdoms of Spain by two acts of Innocent VIII, dated February 11, 1486 and February 6, 1487 — which the 1911 Britannica sums up, in short, as a 1487 "appointment".^[131][132] On the other hand, by the bull Id Nostri Cordis of April 27, 1487, the pope offered a plenary indulgence to whoever would join a crusade against the Waldensians of the Alps — a call confirmed by the Catholic Encyclopedia — and entrusted its execution in the field to his legate Albert Cataneo (Alberto de' Capitanei), archdeacon of Cremona, accredited to Charles VIII of France and Charles II of Savoy.^[133][134] The 1488 expedition, conducted on two fronts — the Alps of the Dauphiné and the Piedmontese valleys, with a planned junction in the Angrogna valley — met fierce resistance and failed: the crusaders were repulsed and the enterprise bogged down.^[135] The episode belongs to the medieval framework of the repression of heresy, which the Church of that time held to be a duty of Christian princes; like the rest of the pontificate, it illustrates a power employing the means of its time without obtaining results. (For the complete dossier on the Inquisition, its justice and its legend, see How to answer the objection of the Inquisition and Heretics and the black legend of the Inquisition.)

An exhausted pope, a Christian end

By the summer of 1492, Innocent VIII was nothing more than a shadow. Undermined by recurring fevers throughout the reign, he sank into a state of extreme exhaustion; a contemporary witness describes him as incapable of absorbing anything other than a few drops of milk.^[136] He died in Rome on July 25, 1492, around sixty years old.^[137][138] Treccani emphasizes that he died “comforted by the sacraments”, in a lucid and dignified attitude before death.^[139] Whatever his weaknesses, he died as a Catholic, provided with the helps of the Church.

The legend of the blood transfusion

A persistent legend was attached to this death: a doctor is said to have tried to save the pope by having him drink the blood of three young boys, who died with him. The account comes from the Diarium of the Roman Stefano Infessura (c. 1435-1500): a contemporary of the events, but a member of anti-papal humanist circles, whose reliability Catholic historians dispute.^[140] Modern historiography does not see in it a transfusion in the present sense — the circulation of the blood was then unknown — but a draught of blood administered orally; and the identification of the doctor, presented as Jewish, with the scholar Abraham de Balmes is likewise disputed.^[141] The episode illustrates the ease with which the black legend of the Renaissance popes embroidered, from a partisan source, unverifiable stories which a serious encyclopedia must report as such.

The Tomb of Pollaiuolo and the Holy Lance

The posthumous fate of Innocent VIII is due to a masterpiece. His bronze tomb, sculpted by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, represents him twice - lying in death and living on his throne, holding in his left hand the iron of the Holy Lance offered by Bayezid II.^[142][143] It is one of the very rare papal monuments to have been transferred intact from the ancient Constantinian basilica in the present basilica, in 1621, through the care of a descendant of the Cibo family.^[144] Striking paradox: this pope, often considered mediocre, rests under one of the most beautiful funerary bronzes of the Roman Renaissance, and his effigy still holds today the most unexpected relic of all his reign.^[145]

The reign of Innocent VIII is a warning disguised as a chronicle. Three lessons emerge for the Catholic understanding of history.

First, the indefectibility of the seat of Peter does not depend on the holiness of its occupants. Innocent VIII was a weak, worldly, nepotistic pope; he bought his tiara and sold offices. And yet, neither the faith nor the apostolic succession were broken: he transmitted intact the revealed deposit, the sacraments, the power of the keys. The Church confesses that Christ built his Church on Peter, according to the promise made at Caesarea (Mt 16:18) - not because the popes are saints, but because the promise is divine.^[146][147]

"Indeed, the Roman Pontiff has over the Church, by virtue of his office of Vicar of Christ and Pastor of the whole Church, a full, supreme and universal power which he can always freely exercise."

• Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 882 (citing Vatican II, Lumen gentium, no. 22)^[148]

Then, this pontificate sheds light on the causes of the crisis which will tear the West apart. When we observe the venality, the nepotism, the worldliness of Innocent VIII - then, even worse, of his successor Alexander VI Borgia - we understand the violence of indignation which, a generation later, would bring about the Protestant Reformation. The Church had not lost the true faith; but its pastors were in dire need of a moral reform, which Trent would eventually accomplish.^{[149][150][151]}

Finally, the story of Innocent VIII reminds us that God writes straight with curved lines. This pope without greatness nevertheless canonized a saint, protected artists, protected Christendom from a Turkish attack through the paradoxical game of the Djem affair, and he died comforted by the sacraments. The black legend made him a monster; the truth makes him a mediocre man in a sublime function - which is, when you think about it, an even greater mystery: that the holiness of the Church can transcend, without being lost, the mediocrity of its servants.^{[152][153][154]}

• Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) - Rodrigo Borgia, immediate successor of Innocent VIII, whose pontificate prolonged the worldly papacy of the Renaissance.
• The Christian Renaissance - the cultural and artistic context of the Quattrocento papacy, between patronage and corruption.
• The witch hunt - the great dossier on witchcraft, the bull Summis desiderantes and the Malleus Maleficarum.
• The Protestant Reformation - the crisis that the worldliness of the Renaissance popes, including Innocent VIII, helped to make inevitable.
• The Council of Trent (1545-1563) - the great Catholic reform which finally cleaned up the abuses of the pre-Tridentine curia.
• The Great Western Schism (1378-1417) - the crisis from which the papacy had barely emerged when Innocent VIII ascended the throne.