Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644)

A twenty-one-year pontificate at the hinge of the Baroque age

Urban VIII first matters because of the length and position of his reign. With nearly twenty-one years in office (1623-1644), he held one of the longest pontificates since the Middle Ages, at the exact turning point of the seventeenth century: the Catholic Reform born from Trent was now established, Rome was being covered with Baroque marble, but the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) was redrawing Europe and the papacy was gradually losing its role as arbiter among princes.^[17][18] To study his reign is to observe the moment when the triumphant Rome of artists coexisted with a papacy politically marginalized on the continental chessboard.

The pope of the bees and Barberini nepotism

The second reason is moral and institutional. Urban VIII has remained, in collective memory, the pope of nepotism at its height: three Barberini made cardinals, a fourth made prince and general of the Church, palaces, fiefs and a colossal fortune.^[19][20] His case became the classic example of the abuse that the papacy would abolish half a century later (the bull Romanum decet Pontificem of Innocent XII, 22 June 1692).^[21] Yet the pope himself, tormented by scruples, twice asked theologians to examine whether his relatives could licitly keep their wealth — proof that Christian conscience was still at work beneath the splendor.^[22]

The pope of Galileo, Castro and Bernini

The third reason is historical and cultural. Under Urban VIII, several of the most discussed episodes in the history of the Church came together: the trial of Galileo, constantly invoked against the Catholic faith; the War of Castro, a military and financial fiasco; but also the masterpiece of Bernini's baldachin and the completion of St Peter's.^[23][24][25] None of these dossiers can be understood apart from the pontificate that carried them. This article therefore treats them together from the point of view of papal government, while referring specialized questions to their own articles (Galileo and science, Jansenism, the Council of Trent).

The documentation on Urban VIII is abundant, as one would expect for a long and richly archived pontificate. The major scholarly synthesis remains Georg Lutz, "Urbano VIII", in the Enciclopedia dei Papi (Treccani, 2000), which reconstructs the career and reign from diplomatic dispatches, curial acts and nunciature correspondence.^[26] For a general account in French and English, Michael Ott's article in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) remains precise, cautious and reliable, and is the basis of most later notices.^[27]

The most complete study is the work of the great historian of the papacy Ludwig von Pastor, whose History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages devotes volumes XXVIII to XXX to Urban VIII (English edition, London, 1929-1938). It is there that one finds the detailed analysis of the finances, wars and politics of the reign.^[28] Classical nineteenth-century historiography — Leopold von Ranke, Die römischen Päpste — shaped two enduring and debated theses: the estimate of the Barberini fortune and the anti-Habsburg interpretation of papal diplomacy.^[29]

For particular points, there are also reliable specialized sources: the acts of the conclave of 1623, notices on the Barberini family, the history of the Wars of Castro, the Holy Office documents on Galileo and on canonization, and the pontifical texts themselves (In eminenti, Caelestis Hierusalem cives, Commissum nobis). These make it possible to distinguish the certain record from edifying or polemical legends transmitted by chroniclers and Roman pasquinades.^[30][31][32]

A family of Florentine merchants

Maffeo Barberini was born in Florence on 5 April 1568, the next-to-last of six children of Antonio Barberini and Camilla Barbadori.^[33][34] The Barberini were a family of Tuscan merchants and bankers, risen from Barberino Val d'Elsa to the Florentine patriciate through trade. His father died prematurely, around 1571, when Maffeo was three; the child was then raised in Rome under the care of his uncle Francesco Barberini, an apostolic protonotary, who opened a curial career to his nephew.^[35][36]

This background deeply marked the future pope: from it he retained a strong sense of family — which would degenerate into nepotism — and the humanist culture of the Florentine elite, nourished by Latin letters and patronage. Maffeo was neither a speculative theologian nor a religious: he was a man of high administration, shaped by law and diplomacy.

The lawyer trained by the Jesuits and at Pisa

Barberini's formation was first legal and literary. A student of the Jesuits at the Roman College, he completed his law studies at the University of Pisa, where he received the doctorate in utroque iure — civil and canon law — on 7 April 1588.^[37] (The Catholic Encyclopedia dates the degree to 1589; the more precise Treccani notice gives 1588.)^[38] From this double formation he drew both the canonical competence that guided his major acts of government and the taste for letters that made him a poet-pope.

Governor, nuncio in France, bishop of Spoleto

Barberini's cursus honorum was that of a major servant of the curia. Governor of Fano (1592), apostolic protonotary (one of the priests charged with writing the pope's official acts) and referendary of the Signature (the judge who studies each case before the pope's tribunal decides), he reached in 1597 the rank of cleric of the Apostolic Camera (a member of the council that manages the pope's money and property).^[39][40] In 1601, Clement VIII sent him to France to congratulate Henry IV on the birth of the dauphin; appointed titular archbishop of Nazareth (1604), he became nuncio in Paris to the French king (1604-1607).^[41][42] There he established links with the French court that would weigh, twenty years later, on his whole policy.

Created cardinal, he received the bishopric of Spoleto on 17 October 1608, which he governed zealously for nearly ten years, holding a diocesan synod and effectively residing there — a practice still rare and fully in the spirit of Trent.^[43][44] In 1617, Paul V made him legate of Bologna and prefect of the Signature of Justice (the president of the pope's high court).

The cardinal and Latin poet

Barberini was created cardinal-priest on 11 September 1606 by Paul V, with the title of San Pietro in Montorio, exchanged in 1610 for Sant'Onofrio.^[45] But this curial prelate was also a recognized man of letters: he published collections of Latin poems (Poemata, several editions, including one in Rome in 1637) that gave him a literary reputation throughout learned Europe.^[46][47] This dimension is not anecdotal: once he became pope, Maffeo Barberini's humanist soul translated into artistic and literary patronage of exceptional breadth, and into a contested reform of liturgical hymns in the name of good Latin.

The death of Gregory XV and the July 1623 conclave

Gregory XV died on 8 July 1623, after a brief two-year pontificate that had nevertheless launched two major institutions: the Congregation of Propaganda Fide (1622) and the reform of conclaves. The cardinals entered conclave on 19 July 1623, in the middle of the Roman summer.^[48][49] Fifty-four took part, divided between the factions of the "creatures" of deceased popes — the Borghese and the Ludovisi — without any faction holding a majority.

The election of 6 August 1623 and malaria

The conclave was harsh. Seventeen days of fruitless ballots, crushing heat and an infectious fever — the dreaded Roman malaria — decimated the assembly and imposed a compromise.^[50][51] Maffeo Barberini, a compromise candidate supported in particular by the mediation of cardinals such as Odoardo Farnese, was elected pope on 6 August 1623 with fifty votes out of fifty-four.^[52] The illness reached even the throne: the new pope himself is said to have contracted malaria during the conclave, and eight cardinals are said to have died within the two weeks following the election — figures given by the contemporary accounts of the conclave.^[53] The scholarly synthesis of Georg Lutz nonetheless retains the overall picture: crushing heat and infectious fever spread among the conclavists, which imposed the compromise; but it retains neither the number of deaths nor the pope's illness, which remain indications not established by historiography.^[54]

"The new pope survived, although he had contracted malaria during the conclave. After the election, eight cardinals died within two weeks." — according to the contemporary accounts of the conclave of 1623, as reported by Wikipedia^[55]

This mortality recalls the fragility of an election held in high summer, in a Rome where marsh fever struck conclavists and pontiffs without distinction.

The name Urban and the coronation

Maffeo Barberini chose the name Urban VIII — urbanus, "courteous", a name already borne by seven popes. Weakened by fever, he postponed his coronation until 29 September 1623, and took possession of the Lateran basilica on 4 November.^[56] At fifty-five, he was one of the youngest popes of the century: no one could have guessed that he would reign for twenty-one years.

Brother and nephews raised to the purple

From the beginning of his reign, Urban VIII made his relatives the pillars of his government. Three days after his coronation, he created his nephew Francesco Barberini (1597-1679) cardinal; Francesco became cardinal-nephew (the pope's nephew made cardinal to help him govern, as his right-hand man) and secretary of state, Vatican librarian (1627), then vice-chancellor (1632, the head of the office that writes and seals the pope's official letters): he was the trusted man of the pontificate, founder of the Barberini Library and patron of the Palazzo Barberini.^[57][58] A second nephew, Antonio Barberini the Younger (1607-1671), was created cardinal in 1627, became camerlengo (1638, the cardinal who guards the Church's property when there is no pope) and commander-in-chief of the papal troops.^[59] The pope's brother, Antonio Marcello Barberini, a Capuchin, also received the purple and the title of Sant'Onofrio.^[60]

The fourth Barberini, Taddeo, remained a layman, but Urban VIII made him prince of Palestrina, prefect of Rome, gonfalonier of the Church (the head of the pope's armies, the one who carries his banner) and commander of Castel Sant'Angelo — in effect the military head of the Papal State.^[61][62] Never had a family so completely occupied the summit of the Church and the Roman state. Their emblem, the three golden bees, multiplied on Rome's facades, fountains and altars, signing the omnipresence of the clan.

"Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini"

The family's enrichment was considerable. Leopold von Ranke reports the figure — often repeated, never fully verified — of 105 million scudi accumulated by the Barberini during the pontificate: he cites a contemporary computation (account of the conclave of Innocent X) while himself marking his disbelief at the sum.^[63][64] Above all, when the pope had the ancient bronze removed from the portico of the Pantheon to feed his building projects, Roman satire coined the most famous epigram in the history of pasquinades:

"What the barbarians did not do, the Barberini did." — Roman pasquinade, c. 1625^[65]

The Catholic Encyclopedia calls the sting "well-known but unwarranted", since the bronze served chiefly for works of art and defense; nevertheless, popular memory sealed in this formula the severe judgment passed on the greed of the Barberini clan.^[66]

The pope's scruples about the legality of nepotism

The most revealing trait is not nepotism itself — then a common practice — but the pope's anxious conscience. Toward the end of his life, Urban VIII, tormented by scruples, twice convened a special commission of theologians to examine whether it was morally licit for his nephews to keep the goods they had accumulated:

"Tormented by scruples concerning his nepotism, he twice appointed a special commission of theologians to examine whether it was lawful that his nephews should keep their possessions; but each time the commission decided in favor of the nephews." — Michael Ott, Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Pope Urban VIII"^[67]

This double consultation, in which the curia conveniently absolved the ruling clan, says enough about the ambiguity of a system that Innocent XI had undertaken to reform and that the Church would not abolish until 22 June 1692, when Innocent XII forbade nepotism by the bull Romanum decet Pontificem.^[68]

The "common father" and the anti-Habsburg line

The pontificate unfolded at the heart of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which opposed the Catholic powers — the Habsburgs of Austria and Spain — to Protestant princes and their allies. Urban VIII wished to act as the "common father of Christendom", refusing to align himself absolutely with the imperial camp.^[69][70] In reality, faithful to a Roman tradition suspicious of Spanish preponderance in Italy, he leaned toward France: he favored the French candidate in the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628-1631) and contributed to the Treaty of Monzon (1626) concerning the Valtellina.^[71][72]

Urban VIII nevertheless sent two million francs of his own money to the Catholic armies in Germany, but refused to excommunicate Louis XIII and Richelieu, fearing a schism like that of Henry VIII's England.^[73] He expressed his principle to the nuncio Nagni:

"It is impossible for me to endanger the common fatherhood and, consequently, to be no longer able to heal and to bring peace, which belongs to the pope as vicar of Christ." — Urban VIII, letter to Nuncio Nagni, 2 April 1629^[74]

The protest of Cardinal Borgia (1632)

This neutrality was perceived by Spain as a betrayal of the Catholic cause. On 8 March 1632, in full consistory, Cardinal Gaspar de Borja y Velasco, spokesman of the Spanish faction, took the floor to accuse the pope publicly of being, by his indifference, co-responsible for the ruin of Catholicism in Germany before the Swedes of Gustavus Adolphus.^[75][76] The incident, unprecedented in form, came close to outrage; there were even rumors of a Spanish threat of deposition.^[77] Urban VIII stood firm and eventually removed Borgia from Rome; but the episode reveals how deeply papal diplomacy had become suspect to both camps.

Historiography long reproached Urban VIII for having, by anti-Habsburg calculation, weakened the Catholic front at the worst moment of the war. The Catholic Encyclopedia nuances this accusation and refutes several legends — especially that of a Requiem allegedly celebrated by the pope for Gustavus Adolphus: in reality, at the death of the Swedish king, Urban gave thanks to "the Lord of vengeance" for having struck down the most bitter enemy of the Catholics.^[78]

The annexation of the Duchy of Urbino (1631)

In Italy, the reign recorded a lasting gain: the reunion of the Duchy of Urbino with the Papal States. At the death, in April 1631, of the last duke Francesco Maria II della Rovere, without a male heir, the territory returned without incident to the Holy See, under an agreement negotiated as early as 1626.^[79][80] It was one of the last great enlargements of the Papal State, which then reached its maximum extension.

Bernini, the baldachin and the consecration of St Peter's

If the pontificate was unhappy in politics, it was glorious in the arts. Urban VIII was the great protector of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, whom he charged with adorning the new basilica of St Peter, which he solemnly consecrated on 18 November 1626.^[81][82] Above the high altar and the tomb of the Apostle, Bernini raised between 1624 and 1633 the colossal bronze baldachin with twisted columns — a manifesto of Roman Baroque art.^[83][84]

"Go, and see with your own eyes that I have given you, so that you may become a great artist, the pope of your time." — saying attributed to Urban VIII addressing the young Bernini, reported by the biographical tradition^[85]

The pope also commissioned from him, as early as 1627, his own monumental tomb in St Peter's — completed only in 1647, three years after his death, opposite that of Paul III — and had the Palazzo Barberini, the Triton Fountain in Piazza Barberini and many other works built, still shaping the face of Baroque Rome.^[86][87]

The bronze of the Pantheon and fortifications

This patronage had a cost: it was expensive, and it touched ancient heritage. For his projects, Urban VIII had the bronze of the beams of the Pantheon portico removed, the act behind the Barberini pasquinade.^[88][89] Concerned with defense, he fortified Castel Sant'Angelo and the Quirinal, raised Fort Urbano at Castelfranco, created an arms manufactory at Tivoli and a military port at Civitavecchia.^[90] These military expenses, added to nepotism, heavily burdened the papal treasury, to the point that the pope was nicknamed "papa gabella" — the tax pope — after allegedly increasing or creating as many as sixty-three consumption taxes.^[91]

Tommaso Campanella and the bull against astrology

A man of letters and science, Urban VIII also protected suspect minds. He had the Dominican Tommaso Campanella, a philosopher imprisoned for decades, released, and even consulted him — surprisingly — on astrological practices meant to ward off omens of death.^[92] The public scandal that followed pushed the pope to promulgate, in 1631, the bull Inscrutabilis against astrology and judicial divination.^[93] In 1634, compromised in a Calabrian conspiracy, Campanella fled to France under the protection of Cardinal Francesco Barberini and Richelieu — an illustration of the contradictions of a pontificate divided between humanist culture and doctrinal vigilance.

Reforming beatification and canonization procedure

Urban VIII's most structuring contribution to the Church was juridical: he founded the modern procedure for beatification and canonization, in force until the reform of John Paul II in 1983. Through a series of Holy Office decrees — the decree Sanctissimus Dominus Noster (13 March 1625), then the decree of 30 October 1625 reserving beatification to the Holy See alone — he forbade any public veneration (halos, images, books of miracles) of a deceased person not yet recognized by the Church.^[94][95]

The key text is the apostolic letter Caelestis Hierusalem cives of 5 July 1634, which reserved exclusively to the Apostolic See the immemorial right to canonize and beatify, and entrusted the investigation of causes to the Congregation of Rites.^[96] The procedural code followed with the Decreta servanda in canonizatione et beatificatione Sanctorum (12 March 1642), which set the demanding legal presumption that a candidate is not holy until his or her sanctity and miracles are rigorously proved.^[97] This rigor explains why Urban VIII himself canonized only two saints: Elizabeth of Portugal (25 May 1625) and Andrew Corsini (22 April 1629).^[98]

The condemnation of Jansenism: the bull In eminenti (1642)

Urban VIII struck the first magisterial blow against emerging Jansenism. The Augustinus of Cornelius Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, who died in 1638, appeared posthumously in 1640 and revived, under cover of Saint Augustine, rigorist theses on grace already close to those of Baius. By the bull In eminenti Ecclesiae militantis, dated 6 March 1642 (and promulgated in 1643), the pope condemned the work.^[99][100]

Notably, In eminenti did not yet refute the errors in detail: it condemned the Augustinus chiefly because it violated the prohibition on publishing about grace without authorization and reissued already censured Baian propositions.^[101] The doctrinal condemnation of the famous five propositions would come later, under Innocent X, by the bull Cum occasione (1653); but Urban VIII set the legal framework for the Church's long struggle against Jansenism.

Reforming the hymns of the Breviary

A humanist pope, Urban VIII wanted to "correct" the Latin of the hymns of the Roman Breviary. A commission of 1629, in which four Jesuit Latinists worked — including the Polish poet Mathias Sarbiewski — made 952 corrections to 98 hymns, recasting the verses of Prudentius, Saint Ambrose and Venantius Fortunatus according to classical meter.^[102] The reform was approved by the bull Divinam psalmodiam (25 January 1631) and integrated into the 1632 edition of the breviary.^[103]

The operation remained controversial. Tradition summarized the criticism in the formula "good Latin came in, piety went out" — a saying whose exact attribution remains uncertain, but which expresses a judgment widespread among liturgists.^[104] Several ancient orders — Dominicans, Benedictines, Cistercians and Carthusians — refused the corrected hymns and kept the primitive texts, which the Roman liturgy itself would restore in 1985.^[105]

Missions: Propaganda Fide and the Urban College

Urban VIII made the young Congregation of Propaganda Fide — founded by Gregory XV in 1622 — a central instrument of worldwide evangelization. In 1627 he created the Urban College of Propaganda Fide (Collegium Urbanum), intended to train missionaries sent to distant lands, and endowed the Congregation with a polyglot press to publish catechisms and books in mission languages.^[106][107] In 1633, he opened China and Japan to all missionaries, revoking the exclusivity that Gregory XIII had reserved to the Jesuits in 1585.^[108]

The bull against the enslavement of the Indians (1639)

In continuity with Sublimis Deus of Paul III (1537), Urban VIII raised a solemn protest against the enslavement of the Indians of America. By the bull Commissum nobis of 22 April 1639, he strictly forbade the enslavement of the Indigenous peoples of Paraguay, Brazil and all the West Indies, under pain of excommunication for anyone who reduced these populations to servitude, sold, bought or exchanged them.^[109][110]

The operative part of the bull, in synthetic translation: absolute prohibition on anyone enslaving the western or southern Indians, selling them, buying them, exchanging them, giving them away or separating them from their wives and children.^[111]

This bull protected in particular the Jesuit reductions of Paraguay. Honesty requires noting that Roman practice remained ambiguous at the time — papal galleys still employed non-Indian slaves — but the act nonetheless marks a stage in the Church's teaching against the slave trade.^[112]

The ban on tobacco in churches (1642)

Urban VIII is finally credited with one of the first pontifical measures against tobacco. By the letter Cum ecclesiae of 30 January 1642, issued in response to complaints from the diocese of Seville, he reportedly imposed excommunication on anyone who sniffed, chewed or smoked tobacco inside churches, out of respect for the holiness of the place.^[113][114] The measure concerned the dignity of worship, not health; it continued a concern popularly associated with the very brief pontificate of Urban VII (1590). In 1725, Benedict XIII, himself a snuff-taker, revoked the penalty of excommunication for the use of tobacco at St Peter's, while maintaining the requirement to keep tobacco away from the altar and the tabernacle.^[115]

A pope first friendly to Galileo

No episode of the pontificate is more discussed than the trial of Galileo. Yet, paradoxically, Urban VIII had first been an admirer of the scientist: as Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, he composed in 1620 a Latin poem in Galileo's honor, and, once pope, he authorized him to set out the Copernican system — on the express condition that it be presented as a mathematical hypothesis, not as a demonstrated physical truth.^[116] Copernicanism had indeed been declared contrary to Scripture by a decree of the Holy Office in 1616.

The Dialogo, Simplicio and the break

In 1632, Galileo published in Florence his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which openly defended heliocentrism. The pope had asked that his own arguments appear in it; Galileo placed them in the mouth of a character named Simplicio — "the simple one", "the naive one" — which Urban VIII experienced as a personal insult.^[117] The rupture of patronage sealed the scientist's fate: the affair moved from scientific debate to the tribunal of the Holy Office.

The trial and the abjuration of 22 June 1633

Summoned to Rome and questioned from 12 April 1633, Galileo appeared before the Roman Inquisition. A commission of cardinals judged that the Dialogue taught Copernicanism as physically true, in breach of the injunction of 1616.^[118] On 22 June 1633, in the convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Galileo abjured; declared "vehemently suspected of heresy", he was sentenced to house arrest — at Arcetri, near Florence — and forbidden to publish. He died there in 1642.

What the condemnation engaged — and what it did not

The episode is too often presented as an infallible condemnation of science by the Church. Precision is necessary. The 1633 sentence was a disciplinary act of a tribunal — the Holy Office —, not a dogmatic definition proclaimed ex cathedra: Urban VIII did not engage his infallible magisterium, and the Church never raised geocentrism to an article of faith.^[119] The judges' error was to transpose unduly a question of scientific fact into the field of doctrine — something John Paul II solemnly acknowledged when closing, on 31 October 1992, the work of a commission instituted in 1981:

"The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the earth, was to think that our knowledge of the structure of the physical world was, in a certain way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. […] In reality, Scripture is not concerned with the details of the physical world, whose knowledge is entrusted to human experience and reasoning." — John Paul II, address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 31 October 1992, § 12^[120]

Far from contradicting the faith, the Galileo affair illustrates the distinction of orders that the Church has always professed: Scripture teaches the way of salvation, not astronomy. For the scientific and theological substance of the dossier, one should turn to the specialized articles; what belongs here to Urban VIII's pontificate is the decision of government — prudent in principle, but hardened by a wound to personal pride.

The War of Castro (1641-1644)

The final act of the reign was a disaster. At the origin was a banal quarrel of etiquette between the Barberini nephews and Odoardo Farnese, duke of Parma and Piacenza, lord of the duchy of Castro on papal lands.^[121] Pushed by his nephews, Urban VIII blocked Castro's grain exports, depriving the duke of income, then seized Castro on 13 October 1641 and excommunicated Farnese on 13 January 1642.^[122][123]

But the duke found allies: Tuscany, Modena and Venice formed a league against the pope. The papal army, commanded by the Barberini, was defeated and the adventure collapsed. The peace, signed at Ferrara on 31 March 1644, was a humiliation: Urban VIII had to lift the excommunication and restore the captured places.^[124][125]

Debt and unpopularity

The cost was ruinous, but its exact amount remains a range debated among historians. Georg Lutz notes that contemporary indications run from a minimum of 5, 6 or 7 million scudi — a sum covering only the war expenditure of the Apostolic Camera at Rome — up to 12, 14 or even 18 million, figures that would also include the devastation, destruction and pillaging suffered by the pontifical territories.^[126] The detailed analysis of the reign's finances is found in Ludwig von Pastor (vols. XXVIII-XXX, exact pagination to be completed).^[127] What is established is the effect: the War of Castro, added to nepotism and fortifications, completed the crushing indebtedness of the Papal States — the consolidated debt of the cameral Monti rose from about 12 to 25-26 million scudi, and the total indebtedness of the Holy See doubled, from about 18-19 to 36-40 million between 1623 and 1644.^[128] The Romans, burdened by new taxes to pay the interest, nursed a tenacious resentment against the pope.

Death on 29 July 1644

Worn down by age, by apoplectic attacks and by the grief of Castro, Urban VIII died at the Quirinal on 29 July 1644, aged seventy-six.^[129][130] News of his death was greeted by popular rejoicing: the exasperated Roman crowd attacked his bust on the Capitol, which was pulled down.^[131] Rarely was the distance so great between the artistic glory of a pontificate and the unpopularity of its end.

The judgment of history

Historiography still struggles to render a balanced verdict. The Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges it: Urban VIII's private life was irreproachable, and the good of the Church appears to have animated his great works — reform of canonization, missions, condemnation of Jansenism, struggle against the enslavement of the Indians.^[132] But the same assessment notes the one great fault that tarnished the reign: unrestrained spending for his nephews, army and fortresses, while he measured his aid to the Catholic cause in Germany.^[133]

"A fully just judgment on Urban VIII cannot yet be passed: his life still awaits the biography it deserves." — after Michael Ott, Catholic Encyclopedia^[134]

Ludwig von Pastor, in the three volumes he devoted to him, concluded with a complex figure: a cultured, pious pope, gifted for the government of the Church, but prisoner of his family and of a foreign policy too subtle for the perils of the time.^[135]

The Barberini after Urban VIII

The fall was brutal. His successor, Innocent X (Pamphilj), opened an investigation into the fortunes accumulated by the Barberini: the three nephews had to flee to Paris under the protection of Cardinal Mazarin, before a reconciliation allowed their return to Rome around 1653, sealed by a marriage between the two families.^[136] The Barberini Library, one of the finest collections of Baroque Rome, was eventually acquired by the Vatican Library under Leo XIII in 1902 — the final scholarly and peaceful legacy of a pontificate too long judged only by its bees and debts.^[137]

Thus Urban VIII's reign remains emblematic of the greatness and servitudes of the Baroque papacy: capable of founding the procedure for saints and covering Rome with masterpieces, but unable to free itself from clan and money. The humanist pope who loved fine Latin and protected Bernini left the Church administratively strengthened, Rome embellished, and the treasury emptied — a contrast that sums up a whole century.

• Pope Gregory XV (1621-1623) — his predecessor, founder of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide and reformer of conclaves.
• Pope Innocent X (1644-1655) — his successor, who prosecuted the Barberini and condemned the five Jansenist propositions (1653).
• Pope Urban VII (1590) — the other recent pope named Urban, to whom popular memory attributes the first ban on smoking in churches.
• Pope Paul V (1605-1621) — the pope who created him cardinal and under whom the first Roman dossier on Copernicanism opened in 1616.
• The Council of Trent (1545-1563) — the council of the Catholic Reform whose spirit Urban VIII applied and extended (episcopal residence, discipline of cults, liturgy).
• Pope Innocent XI (1676-1689) — the pope who, half a century later, undertook to abolish papal nepotism.