Pope Sixtus IV
Pope Sixtus IV came into the Holy position of the Pope in 1414. From the moment he took the position he started using his position to grant favors upon those loyal to him. He made two of his nephews Cardinals right away and then distanced himself from the vow of poverty he had taken as part of the Franciscan order. The coronation tiara he commissioned for himself cost 100,000 ducats which was one third of the annual income of the papacy.
The lavish lifestyle that he adopted once he became Pope was hard to maintain and as such he decided to increase taxes, especially one on priests who took mistresses. He even sold “privileges” to rich men which gave them permission to give “solace” to women when their husbands were absent. Scandals abounded during his papacy when people realized that much of his nepotism focused on handsome young boys. It became the belief that some of the positions were given as rewards for sexual favors.
Another scandal that arose was the Pazzi conspiracy. This was a plot that was hatched to kill Lorenzo and Guiliano de Medici. Historians are unsure of how much Pope Sixtus III knew and how involved he was in the plot. It was known that he wanted to overthrow the Medici and it was inconceivable that this could happen without the deaths of Lorenzo and Giuliano. The assassination attempt was successful on Giuliano but Lorenzo managed to escape.
In 1478, the worst of Pope Sixtus III’s legacy began when he issued an order that sanctioned the Spanish Inquisition. Over the next 300 years the Inquisition maintained a reign of terror that imprisoned and tortured hundreds of thousands of people. Torture chambers and devices were built just to extract confessions of heresy and even children were imprisoned as part of the Inquisition. It was not until 1813 that the Inquisition was finally suppressed.