Pope Innocent X

Giovanni Battista Pamphili was born in Rome in 1574 to a family lately arrived from Umbria, trained as a lawyer at the Collegio Romano, and climbed the Vatican ladder in his uncle's shadow — auditor of the Rota, then cardinal-priest of Sant'Eusebio. He spent years as a papal diplomat in Naples, France, and Spain before emerging from a bitterly contested conclave in September 1644, French and Spanish factions deadlocked, to succeed Urban VIII as Innocent X. His decade as pontiff proved ruthlessly pragmatic: he expanded the Holy See's temporal reach, entangled himself in the English Civil War an…