Pope Alexander VII (; 13 February 159922 May 1667), 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.Note on numbering: Pope Alexander V is now considered an anti-pope. At the time however, this fact was not recognised and so the fifth true Pope Alexander took the official number VI. This caused the true sixth Pope Alexander to take the number VII. This has advanced the numbering of all subsequent Popes Alexander by one. Popes Alexander VI–VIII are really the fifth through seventh popes by that name.
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 lived simply and kept up the anti-nepotist position which he had held at the time of his election; later, however, his relatives received jobs in his administration and came to dominate it. 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, Fabio was the son of Count Flavio Chigi-Ardenghesca, Capitano del Popolo, and Laura Marsigli. He was privately tutored and eventually received doctorates of philosophy, law, and theology from the University of Siena.
Papal diplomat In 1627, Fabio began his apprenticeship as vice-papal legate at Ferrara, and on recommendations from two cardinals he was appointed Inquisitor of Malta.V. Borg, Fabio Chigi, Apostolic Delegate in Malta, 1634–1639. An edition of his official correspondence (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1967).
Fabio 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, he was named Bishop of Nardò in southern Italy and consecrated on 1 July 1635Patritius Gauchat, Hierarchia catholica medii et recentioris aevi Tomus IV, editio altera (Monasterii 1935), p. 257, and note 5. by Miguel Juan Balaguer Camarasa, Bishop of Malta."Pope Alexander VII - Fabio Chigi" Catholic-Hierarchy.org. David M. Cheney. Retrieved 2 July 2016 On 13 May 1652, Fabio was transferred to the Bishopric of Imola.
Fabio was named nuncio in Cologne (1639–1651) 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, Fabio (and other Catholic delegates) 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. He protested against the Treaty of Westphalia on behalf of the Papacy once the instruments were finally completed.Derek Croxton and Anuschka Tischer, The Peace of Westphalia : a historical dictionary (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002). Pope Innocent X himself stated that the Peace "is null, void, invalid, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time."Kalevi Jaakko Holsti, Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), p. 25. The Peace ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and established the balance of European power that lasted until the French Revolutionary Wars (1792).
Secretary of State and Cardinal Pope Innocent X (1644–1655) recalled Fabio to Rome and, in December 1651, named him Secretary of State.Salvador Miranda, Biographical notes on Fabio Chigi . Retrieved; 19 March 2016. 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.Gauchat, p. 30.
Papacy Election as pope
When Innocent X died on 7 January 1655, Fabio 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.J. P. Adams, Sede Vacante 1655. Retrieved: 19 March 2016.
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 (known popularly as "la papessa" due to her extraordinary influence over Pope Innocent X) 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 lived simply and forbade his relatives even to visit Rome, but in the consistory of 24 April 1656, he announced that his brother and nephews would be moving to the capital to assist him. 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.Oliva Muratore, "Formello, Villa Versaglia," Methodical Approach to the Restoration of Historic Architecture (ed. Calogero Bellanca) (Firenze: Alinea Editrice, 2011), pp. 123–135.
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 relatives were required to kneel for the entirety of their first audience, as the pope explained 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 theatreKrautheimer 1985, 3–7 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.Full title: Il Nuovo Teatro delle fabriche et edificij in prospettiva di Roma moderna sotto il felice pontificato di N.S. Alessandro VII, (The New Theatre of the building works and edifices of modern Rome under the happy pontificate of Our Lord Alexander VII), published by Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi 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 BerniniCharles Avery, Bernini: Genius of the Baroque (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997). Franco Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 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'sAnthony Blunt, Borromini (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1979), esp. pp. 111 ff. church of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza and many other works of his reign.Alexander’s forebear, Agostino Chigi, was banker to Julius II, who granted Agostino the right to a coat-of-arms which quartered the oak, the heraldic emblem of the della Rovere, Julius’s family, with his own family's arms.
Alexander took a keen personal interest in his urban and architectural projects and made notes of these in his diaries.See 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,Dorothy Metzger Habel, "When All of Rome was Under Construction": The Building Process in Baroque Rome (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), pp. 85–132. 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.Rossella Vodret Adamo, Palazzo Chigi (Milan: Electa, 2001). The Palazzo Chigi in Rome is not to be confused with the Palazzo Chigi in S. Quirico d'Orcia in Tuscany,Odoardo Reali, Palazzo Chigi a San Quirico: un restauro in corso (San Quirico d'Orcia [Italy]: Editrice DonChisciotte, 1997). or the Palazzo Chigi di Formello.Iefke van Kampen, Il nuovo Museo dell'Agro Veientano a Palazzo Chigi di Formello (Roma: Quasar, 2012).
Foreign relations
Malta