Pope Sixtus IV

Francesco della Rovere became head of the Catholic Church in August 1471 and spent thirteen years pulling Rome into contradictions. He assembled the artists who brought the early Renaissance to the city, commissioning the chapel that would bear his name and creating the Vatican Library as a center of learning. Then in 1478 he issued the bull that established the Spanish Inquisition, and personally involved himself in the Pazzi conspiracy to overthrow the Medici in Florence by force. He filled the Church with relatives, annulled the decrees of the Council of Constance, and died in August 1484 a…