Innocent XI

Pope Innocent XI was born Benedetto Odescalchi on 16 May 1611 in Como, in the Duchy of Milan, into a wealthy Lombard family engaged in banking and commerce. His father, Livio Odescalchi, belonged to a house that had risen through trade. Benedetto received a Jesuit education in Como and then studied law in Rome and Naples, taking a doctorate in civil and canon law. After a brief period of military service with Venice against the Ottomans, he entered the papal administration as apostolic protonotary and governor of Macerata. In 1645 Pope Innocent X created him a cardinal. As bishop of Novara from 1650 to 1656 he was noted for pastoral zeal, personal austerity, and charity to the poor. He resigned the see, returned to Rome, lived simply, and distributed much of his fortune in alms, acquiring a reputation for integrity unusual in the mid-seventeenth-century Curia.

He was elected pope on 21 September 1676 after a long, faction-ridden conclave and took the name Innocent XI. He at once set about reforming papal finances and court morals. Previous pontificates had left the treasury strained; he cut household expenditure, opposed the sale of offices, and attacked nepotism, though a comprehensive anti-nepotism constitution was not completed in his lifetime. In 1679 the Holy Office under his authority condemned a series of laxist moral propositions. He created cardinals sparingly and sought to restore a more spiritual character to the papacy after decades of princely display. His own manner of life remained severe: he ate and slept little and continued personal almsgiving.

Two external struggles dominated the pontificate. Innocent XI gave substantial subsidies and diplomatic support to the Holy League against the Ottoman Empire, backing Emperor Leopold I and King John III Sobieski of Poland. The relief of Vienna in 1683 and the later reconquest of much of Hungary were celebrated in Rome as victories of Christendom. Simultaneously he resisted Louis XIV of France over Gallican claims, the royal right of régale in vacant bishoprics, and the Four Articles of 1682. He refused to confirm French bishops who had subscribed to those articles, leaving many sees vacant for years. He also criticized the forced conversions that followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. In 1687 he condemned the Quietist teaching of Miguel de Molinos. Relations with Catholic monarchs were therefore often tense even when he shared their hostility to Ottoman or Protestant power.

Innocent XI died in Rome on 12 August 1689 and was buried in St. Peter's Basilica. Political opposition, especially from France, long delayed official recognition of his cult. He was beatified by Pope Pius XII on 7 October 1956; his feast is kept on 12 August. He has not been canonized. Historians generally regard him as one of the more vigorous reforming popes of the seventeenth century, remembered for fiscal honesty, resistance to nepotism, defense of papal authority against Gallicanism, and commitment to the military defense of Christian Europe, even if his methods were often rigid and his diplomacy unyielding.