Everything about Pope Nicholas V totally explained
Nicholas V (Italian:
Niccolò V;
November 15,
1397 –
March 24,
1455), born
Tommaso Parentucelli, was
Pope from
March 6,
1447 to his death in 1455.
Biography
He was born at
Sarzana,
Liguria, where his father was a
physician. His father died while he was young, but in
Florence, Parentucelli became a tutor in the families of the
Strozzi and
Albizzi, where he made the acquaintance of the leading
humanist scholars. He studied at
Bologna, gaining a degree in
theology in
1422, whereupon the
bishop,
Niccolò Albergati, was so much struck with his capacities that he took him into his service and gave him the chance to pursue his studies further, by sending him on a tour through
Germany,
France and
England. He was able to collect books, for which he'd an intellectual's passion, wherever he went. Some of them survive, with his marginal annotations.
He distinguished himself at the
Council of Florence, and in
1444, when his patron died, he was appointed
bishop of Bologna in his place. Civic disorders at Bologna were prolonged, so
Pope Eugene IV (1431–1447) soon named him as one of the legates sent to
Frankfurt to negotiate an understanding between the
Papal States and the
Holy Roman Empire, with regard to undercutting or at least containing the reforming decrees of the
Council of Basel (1431–1439). His successful diplomacy gained him the reward, on his return to
Rome, of the title of
Cardinal priest of
Santa Susanna (December
1446). He was elected Pope in succession to Eugene IV on 6 March of the following year, taking the name of Nicholas V in honour of his early benefactor.
The eight scant years of his pontificate (1447–1455) were important in the political, scientific and literary history of the world. Politically, he made the
Concordat of Vienna, or
Aschaffenburg (
February 17,
1448) with the German King,
Frederick III (1440–1493), by which the decrees of the Council of Basel against papal
annates and reservations were abrogated so far as Germany was concerned; and in the following year he secured a still greater tactical triumph, when the resignation of the
antipope Felix V (1439–1449) (7 April) and his own recognition by the rump of the council of Basel (1431–39), assembled at
Lausanne, put an end to the
Western Schism (1378–1417). The next year,
1450, Nicholas V held a
Jubilee at Rome; and the offerings of the numerous pilgrims who thronged to Rome gave him the means of furthering the cause of culture in Italy, which he'd so much at heart. In March
1452 he crowned Frederick III as Emperor in
St. Peter's, the last occasion of the coronation of an
Emperor at Rome.
Within the city of Rome, Nicholas V introduced the fresh spirit of the
Renaissance. His plans were of embellishing the city with new monuments worthy of the capital of the
Christian world. His first care was practical, to reinforce the city's fortifications, cleaning and even paving some main streets and restoring the water supply. The end of ancient Rome is sometimes dated from the destruction of its magnificent array of aqueducts by
6th century invaders. In the
Middle Ages Romans depended for water on wells and cisterns, and the poor dipped their water from the yellow
Tiber. The
Aqua Virgo aqueduct, originally constructed by
Agrippa, was restored by Pope Nicholas V, and emptied into a simple basin that
Leon Battista Alberti designed, the predecessor of the
Trevi Fountain.
But the works on which he especially set his heart were the rebuilding of the
Vatican and the
Borgo district, and
St Peter's Basilica, where the reborn glories of the papacy were to be focused. He got as far as pulling down part of the ancient basilica, made some alterations to the
Lateran Palace (of which some frescos by
Fra Angelico bear witness), and laid up 2,522 cartloads of marble from the dilapidated
Colosseum for use in the later constructions.
Under the generous patronage of Nicholas V,
humanism made rapid strides as well. The new humanist learning had been looked on with suspicion in Rome, a possible source of
schism and
heresy, an unhealthy interest in
paganism. Nicholas V instead employed
Lorenzo Valla as a
notary and kept hundreds of copyists and scholars, with the special aim of wholesale translations of
Greek works, pagan as well as Christian, into
Latin, giving as much as ten thousand
gulden for a metrical translation of
Homer. This industry, coming just before the dawn of
printing, contributed enormously to the sudden expansion of the intellectual horizon. Nicholas V founded a library of nine thousand volumes. The Pope himself was a man of vast erudition, and his friend Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, later
Pope Pius II (1458–1464), said of him that "what he doesn't know is outside the range of human knowledge".
In 1452, Nicholas V issued the
papal bull Dum Diversas, granting the king of Portugal the right to reduce any "
Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery.
Dum Diversas legitimised the
colonial slave trade that begun around this time with the expeditions by
Henry the Navigator to find a sea route to
India, which were financed with African slaves. This approval of slavery was reaffirmed and extended in his
Romanus Pontifex of 1455.
He was compelled, however, to add that the lustre of his pontificate would be forever dulled by the
fall of Constantinople, which the
Turks took in
1453. The Pope bitterly felt this catastrophe as a double blow to
Christendom and to
Greek letters. "It is a second death," wrote Aeneas Silvius, "to Homer and
Plato". Nicholas V preached a
crusade, and endeavoured to reconcile the mutual animosities of the Italian states, but without much success. He didn't live long enough to see the effect of the Greek scholars armed with unimagined manuscripts, who began to find their way to Italy.
In undertaking these works Nicholas V was moved "to strengthen the weak faith of the populace by the greatness of that which it sees". The Roman populace, however, appreciated neither his motives nor their results, and in
1452 a formidable conspiracy for the overthrow of the papal government, under the leadership of
Stefano Porcaro, was discovered and crushed. This revelation of disaffection, together with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, darkened the last years of Pope Nicholas V; "As Thomas of Sarzana," he said, "I had more happiness in a day than now in a whole year".
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