Pope Nicholas III

Pope from 1277 to 1280

  • Fame58.0
  • Momentum0.0
  • Wikipedia6.5K
Source-basedFalling
Lived 1215–1280, aged 65Italy
  • Wikipedia
    68 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    1215–1280
    Aged 65
Summary
Updated 2026-06-08

Giovanni Gaetano Orsini climbed through eight papacies before family pull delivered him the throne itself. He lasted three years, but Dante landed him headfirst in hell — simony, nepotism, the works — and the literary damnation stuck harder than anything he did in life.

Biography

About

Born around 1225 into Roman nobility, Giovanni Gaetano Orsini spent decades moving through the papal machinery: Cardinal-Deacon under Innocent IV, protector of the Franciscans under Alexander IV, inquisitor-general under Urban IV. After a six-month vacancy following John XXI's death in 1277, family influence secured his election in November. He ruled the Papal States for less than three years, dying on 22 August 1280. What followed shaped his afterlife more than his reign: Dante placed him in the Inferno's eighth circle, buried upside-down among the simoniacs, and that poetic sentence became h…

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By the numbers

Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Falling
58.0
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Historical23.6
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
Global rank
Country rank
Category rank
Receipts

Sources

  • Wikipedia
    wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
    High confidence
  • Wikidata
    wikidata · wikidata.org
    High confidence
  • Pantheon 2.0
    database · pantheon.world
    High confidence