Pope Paul V

Born Camillo Borghese in 1550 and trained in law, he rose through the Church to become Cardinal Vicar of Rome before his election as pope in May 1605. Stern and unyielding, he defended ecclesiastical privilege so fiercely that he placed Venice under interdict in 1606, a standoff resolved only by French and Spanish mediation the following year. In 1611 he honored Galileo as a member of the papal academy and supported his work, but by 1616 instructed Cardinal Bellarmine to tell the astronomer that Copernican heliocentrism could not be taught as fact - though the certificate Bellarmine issued let Galileo keep studying, a document he'd lean on at his trial in 1633. Paul V poured money into completing St. Peter's Basilica, restored the ancient Aqua Traiana aqueduct, expanded the Vatican Library, founded the Banco di Santo Spirito, and elevated the Borghese family through systematic nepotism. He died in January 1621 after a series of strokes, having created sixty cardinals and left Rome richer and the Church's reach contested.