(Alexander VII.)

Fabio Chigi born at Sienna, the sixteenth of February 1599, was Pope under the name of Alexander VII. His family, seeing him a hopeful young man, sent him early to Rome, where he contracted a very useful friendship with the marquis Pallavicino; for that marquis recommended him in such a manner to Pope Urban VIII, that, in a little time, he procured him the place of inquisitor at Malta. Chigi, having shewed in that employment, that he was capable of greater things, was sent to Ferrara in the quality of vice-legate, and afterwards nuncio into Germany.

He had the most favourable opportunity that a man of that character could desire, to shew his intriguing genius; for he was mediator at Munster, during the long conferences that were held there for the peace of Europe, and acted his part very well. Before he went to Munster, he had the nunciature of Cologne, and exercised it some years after the conclusion of the peace. He held it in 1651, when cardinal Mazarin fled to the elector of Cologne; and he was ordered to complain, in the name of Pope Innocent X, a great enemy of that cardinal, that that elector permitted his eminence to raise troops. Cardinal Mazarin bore some resentment for it against Fabio Chigi, who was soon after promoted to the cardinalship, and to the office of secretary of state, by Innocent X; but that resentment was sacrificed to politic interests, at the election of a pope in 1655. Cardinal Sacchetti, a good friend of cardinal Mazarin, seeing no likelihood to obtain the papacy, by reason of the great obstacles of the Spanish faction, advised the latter to consent to the exaltation of Fabio Chigi, and his request was granted. When the dispositions of France were known in the conclave, all the partizans of that crown united their voices in favour of Chigi; on which the flying squadron, who looked upon him as their master, resolved to be favourable to him. The faction of the Medicis and Spaniards had their particular reasons to choose him; insomuch that he was created pope by the voices of all the sixty-four cardinals that were in the conclave. There are but few examples of such a unanimity in the election of popes.

It being known the day before the election, what choice the Holy Ghost had resolved to inspire the next day, the cardinals went to congratulate his eminence, who answered them at first only with sighs and tears in his eyes, desiring them to make a better choice: but afterwards he took courage, and thanked

them for their good-will. After the election, he was carried, according to custom, to St Peter’s church, to receive the adoration of the cardinals on the great altar. He would not be placed in the middle of that altar, but on one of the corners of it; because, as he said, he did not think himself worthy of the place held by his predecessor. During all the ceremony of the adoration, he continued prostrate on the ground with great humility, with a crucifix in his arms. Being come to his apartment at the Vatican, before thinking of any thing else, he ordered his coffin to be made, wherein his body was to be laid after his death, and to be placed under his bed, to excite him the more to holiness by a continual idea of death. When they clothed him with his pontifical habits, they found a hair cloth under his shirt. He continued to fast twice a week, as he had done when he was cardinal. The day after his election, he repulsed Signora Olympia rudely, who was come to wish him joy, saying to her, that it was not decent for a woman to set her foot in the palace of the head of the church. He also forbad his relations to come to Rome without his leave; but his subsequent behaviour shewed, that this was only dissimulation and cunning; and many Roman Catholics made no scruple to complain of his artifices. Afterwards he became civil and obliging to his nephews, and no pope better deserved the pasquil, et homo factus est, nor took more advantage of the privileges of Nepotism than he. It is said (I know not how truly) that he had sworn never to receive his relations in Rome, and that, being perplexed with the sacredness of his oath, he knew not how to satisfy the affection he had for his family; that father Pallavicino removed those scruples, by advising him to go and meet his relations, some leagues from Rome, and made him understand, that his holiness’s oath did not forbid him to receive his relations on the road from Sienna to Rome, but only to receive them at Rome; that the pope, assured by this ingenious distinction, went to meet his family, and received it upon the road, in the very high way. Afterwards he poured dignities and benefices on his relations. His brother, Don Mario, was made governor of the Ecclesiastical State; Flavio Chigi, the son of Don Mario, was made cardinal Patron; Sigismund Chigi, the orphan son of another of the pope’s brothers, was gratified with several good pensions, till he came to be of age to be made a cardinal with some decency. Augustin Chigi, designed to be the pillar of the family, was married to a very rich niece of prince Borghese; a very great match, with a fortune of an hundred thousand ducats, and twenty thousand doubloons over and above, instead of jewels, and lastly, sixty thousand doubloons delivered up into the hands of the husband. One of the sons of the pope’s sister was made a cardinal; the other, who was a knight of Malta, was made general of the gallies. Donna Berenice, the wife of Don Mario, and her daughters, had also rich presents. Flavio Chigi, who was cardinal Patron, and who was sent legate à latere into France, to make satisfaction concerning the business of the Corsicans, made himself much spoken of. He died the 13th of September, 1693, at 63 years of age, loaded with riches and titles. Vice-dean of the sacred college, bishop of Porto, arch-priest of St John of Lateran, prefect of the signature of justice, &c. He made his nephew Don Livio Chigi his chief heir, and left ten thousand crowns, and the enjoyment of the estate, which he had at Sienna, to his brother-in-law the Marquis Zandedari, whom he charged to take the name and the arms of the house of Chigi.

All this was a sad disappointment to the famous antagonist of father Paul. I mean father Sforza Pallavicino, author of a history of the council of Trent, designed for the refutation of father Paul,

and which was rewarded with a cardinal’s hat. He prefixed a pompous eulogy of Alexander VII to his book, wherein he had very much praised the design, which the holy father had persisted in, not to suffer his relations to come to Rome. Every body sees, that many fine things may be said on that subject, and that it affords noble matter for an excellent panegyric in the hands of a good orator. But it fell out unluckily for father Pallavicino, that the pope altered his resolution, and desired to aggrandize his relations, according to the practice of Nepotism: nay, it is said, that that father was obliged to remove the scruples of his conscience. After all, it was more advantageous to please the pope and his family, than to be fond of a prologue already printed, though the panegyric, which it contained, was never so fine. Nevertheless, this was not agreeable to an author; but there was no help for it; he was forced to suppress what was already come out of the press, and to adjust things as well as he could.

For the curiosity of the thing, I shall observe, that there are some printed books, wherein it is asserted, that Alexander VII had a mind to abjure his religion, and to turn Huguenot. The Dutch gazettes praised him much, and informed the public, that he did not approve of the violences, which were committed against the Vaudois in Piedmont. What he said to some Protestant gentlemen, who came to kiss his feet, has been much talked of. Sorbiere, being to answer a letter, wherein somebody had written to him, that his journey to Rome would make him return again to the reformed church, declared, that he had seen nothing at Rome, but what edified him, “and that the Roman court, notwithstanding its pomp, had a great deal of affability and modesty. For my part,” he goes on, “I can assure you, sir, that I could not observe so much haughtiness in any of the cardinals, whom I had the honour to approach,

as there is in some ministers of our acquaintance; and, in all the audiences that I have had of our holy father, I spoke to him with the same liberty as I converse with you, his goodness requiring it so from all those who approach him. I shall tell you a remarkable particular on this occasion, that you will not be displeased to know. A little before my departure, some English gentlemen, who had a mind to be witnesses of what I tell you of his holiness, got in among those, who went to pay their respects to him on their knees. He asked them what countrymen they were, and, afterwards, if they were not Protestants, which they owned. Whereupon his holiness replied, with a smiling countenance, " Rise therefore, I will not have you to commit an idolatry, according to your opinion. I shall not give you my blessing, since you do not believe me to be what I am; but I pray God to make you fit to receive it.”

It has been said, in other books, (not without finding some mystery in it) that he was related to the grand signior Mahomet IV. I have not the book, wherein this is proved, so that I can only serve my reader with these words of Heidegger:—“He was akin to Mahomet, at that time emperor of the Turks, in the fifth degree, by Alanc Moruglius, the common stem and ancestor of the fathers, both of the pope and the grand Turk, as Pastorius, in Henninge redivivo, has demonstrated.” Heidegg. Hist. Pap. pag. 413. ¹³⁹ I have since met with a book, which sets forth in a table the parentage of Alexander VII and the great Turk. It is pretended, that Margaret Marsili, daughter of Nani Marsili, a noble Sienese, was the wife of Soliman, and the mother of Selim II, whose son Amurath III was the father of Mahomet III. The latter was the father of Achmet I, who was the father of Amurath IV, whose son Ibrahim was the father of

Mahomet IV. On the other side, Leonard Marsili, brother of Margaret had a son, whose name was Cesar Marsili, who was the father of Alexander Marsili, and of Laura Marsili, the mother of Fabio Chigi, who was pope by the name of Alexander VII. The author, whom I cite, alleges the account, which Francis Niger gives of the taking of a castle in the territory of Sienna. The Turkish pirates, who plundered that castle about the year 1525, found Margaret Marsili there, and, because she was very handsome, they kept her for Solyman.

Alexander VII was an author. The finest edition of his Latin poems is that of the Louvre, in folio, in the year 1656. It consists of heroic, elegiac, and lyric verses: the last exceed the other in number. There is also a tragedy, intitled Pompey. The author made it in the country, in the year 1621. Seneca was his model, both for the disposition of the piece, and the measure of the verses. A letter, prefixed before this collection, inform us, that he unwillingly consented to the printing of his poems, and that he would not suffer his name to be put to them, nor any other title, than that which discovers, that they are only the fruits of his younger years. The title is Philomathi Musæ Juveniles. ¹⁴⁰ But there are many pieces in it, that he composed when a man, and if all the praises, which the authors of the Poetical Acclamations They are printed at the end of the edition of the Philomathi Musæ Juveniles. ¹⁴¹ have bestowed upon this pope’s verses were true, he was the most accomplished of all the poets; but, because those authors flourished at Rome under this pontiff, their eulogies are not much to be relied upon. He loved literature, and to discourse of poetry, history, and politics, with learned persons. He loved stately buildings; and it was not his fault, that the whole city of Rome did not become equally magnificent and regular as to the

streets, squares, and houses. The mischief was, that these expenses exhausted the apostolic chamber, and that, by ordering the demolishing of many houses, which were not according to the rules of symmetry, he ruined the proprietors. There is something great in the design of the college della Sapienza, the building whereof he finished, and which he adorned with a very fine library. The consistorial advocates raised him a pompous inscription on that subject. He died the twenty-second of May 1667, much more lamented by the Jesuits, than by the Jansenists.—Art. Chigi.