Concept
Pope Innocent VIII
Overview
Pope Innocent VIII (Latin: Innocentius VIII; Italian: Innocenzo VIII; 1432 – 25 July 1492), born Giovanni Battista Cybo (or Cibo), was head of the Catholic Church and leader of the Papal States from 29 August 1484 to his death, in July 1492. Son of the viceroy of Naples, Cybo spent his early years at the Neapolitan court. He became a priest in the retinue of Cardinal Calandrini, half-brother to Pope Nicholas V (1447–55); Bishop of Savona under Pope Paul II; and with the support of Cardinal Giuliano Della Rovere he was made a cardinal by Pope Sixtus IV. After intense politicking by Della Rovere, Cybo was elected pope in 1484. King Ferdinand I of Naples had supported Cybo's competitor, Rodrigo Borgia. The following year, Pope Innocent supported the barons in their failed revolt.
During his papacy, Pope Innocent issued a papal bull on witchcraft named Summis desiderantes affectibus. In March 1489, Cem, the captive brother of Bayezid II, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, came into Innocent's custody. Viewing his brother as a rival, the Sultan paid Pope Innocent not to set him free. The amount he paid to Pope Innocent was 120,000 crowns (an amount equal to all of the annual revenue to the Vatican) in addition to some holy relics and another sum of money to be paid annually. Any time the Sultan threatened war against the Christian Balkans, Innocent threatened to release his brother. On 28 January 1495, Cem was released by Innocent's successor, Pope Alexander VI, into the custody of the army of King Charles VIII of France.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Other regulations, of a similar tendency, were established in other parts of Europe. But the power of the pope, in the collation of the great benefices of the church, seems, before the reformation, to have been nowhere so effectually and so universally restrained as in France and England. The concordat afterwards, in the sixteenth century, gave to the kings of France the absolute right of presenting to all the…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
States what Pope Innocent VIII is.
When enlightenment spread, with the renaissance of letters in the fifteenth century, there was a very general complaint of abuses, and everybody agrees that the complaint was just. Pope Alexander VI. had openly bought the papal tiara, and his five bastards shared its advantages. His son, the cardinal-duke of Borgia, made an end, in concert with his father, of Vitelli, Urbino, Gravina, Oliveretto, and a hundred other…
Voltaire, Toleration and other essays
Close in meaning to Pope Innocent VIII; the term itself is not named.
But hearing that his new laws were not observed by the judges in dictating the law, nor by the people in hearing it; and that the great men took servants from free men, and from the Churches and Monasteries, to labour in their vineyards, fields, pastures and houses, and continued to exact cattle and wine of them, and to oppress those that served the Churches: he wrote to his son _Pipin_ to remedy these abuses, to…
Isaac Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John
Close in meaning to Pope Innocent VIII; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Pope Innocent VIII
Related ideas
- Waldensians
- Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
- Mainz
- Michelangelo
- Ottoman Empire
- Rome
- Spain
- Apostolic Palace
- Granada
- Crusades
- Raphael
- Pope Nicholas V
- Genoa
- Balkans
- Provence
- Padua
- Naples
- Republic of Genoa
- Catholic Church
- Cardinal (Catholic Church)
- Franciscans
- Sultan
- Christendom
- Knights Hospitaller
Place in the tradition
Part of Western esotericism.