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 and the First War of Castro, sparred with French church officials over financial fraud, and in 1653 issued a bull condemning Jansenism. He died in Rome in January 1655, having steered the Church through war and schism with a lawyer's cold grip on power.