Paolo Alessandro Maffei

Paolo Alessandro Maffei was an antiquarian with a humanist education, who was active in Rome. Maffei was the son of Paolo Maffei and his wife Giovanna di Raffaele, both of patrician families of Volterra. He was a descendant of the humanist and papal bureaucrat Raffaello Maffei, "il Volterrano," (1451–1522), author of the Commentaria urbana (1506), dedicated to Julius II. Paolo Alessandro was made a cavaliere of the Tuscan Order of Saint Stephen and an honorary member of the Papal Guard. He wrote the laudatory biography of Pope Pius V, in which he praised the Pope's suppression of newsletters and slanderous printed avvisi in 1572.