* 1483 – Pope Sixtus IV consecrates the Sistine Chapel.

Pope Sixtus IV gave the nuns canonical status in 1474.

Pope Paul II suppressed this college ; but Sixtus IV ( Constitutio 16, " Divina ") reestablished it.

Abbreviators of the lower presidency before their suppression were simple clerics, and according to permission granted by Sixtus IV ( loc.

The church and monastery of San Pietro in Montorio originally belonged to the Celestines in Rome ; but they were turned out of it by Sixtus IV to make way for Franciscans, receiving from the Pope in exchange the Church of St Eusebius of Vercelli with the adjacent mansion for a monastery.

More likely, Pope Sixtus IV granted Cesare a release from the necessity of proving his birth in a papal bull of 1 October 1480.

Coming from modest beginnings in Savona, Liguria, the family rose to prominence through nepotism and ambitious marriages arranged by two Della Rovere popes, Francesco della Rovere, who ruled as Pope Sixtus IV ( 1471 – 1484 ) and his nephew Giuliano ( Pope Julius II, 1503 – 1513 ).

Pope Sixtus IV is known for having built the Sistine Chapel, which is named for him.

On 28 February 1476, Pope Sixtus IV, a Franciscan after whom the Sistine Chapel is named, authorized those dioceses that wished to introduce the feast to do so, and introduced it to his own diocese of Rome in 1477, with a specially composed Mass and Office of the feast.

In Rome, the papal collections were brought together by Pope Nicholas V, in separate Greek and Latin libraries, and housed by Pope Sixtus IV, who consigned the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana to the care of his librarian, the humanist Bartolomeo Platina in February 1475.

* 1477 – Uppsala University is inaugurated after receiving its corporate rights from Pope Sixtus IV in February the same year.

The most important member of the Monterotondo Orsinis was Giovani Battista Orsini, who became cardinal under Sixtus IV ( 1483 ).

Bartolomeo Platina, the scholar who was prefect of the Vatican Library, wrote his Vitæ Pontificum Platinæ historici liber de vita Christi ac omnium pontificum qui hactenus ducenti fuere et XX in 1479 at the behest of his patron, Pope Sixtus IV.

Cardinal Piccolomini participated in the conclave that elected Pope Paul II ( 1464 – 71 ) in 1464, but was absent when Pope Sixtus IV ( 1471 – 84 ) was elected in 1471.

He was employed in several important legations, as by Paul II at the Imperial diet at Regensburg / Ratisbon, and later by Sixtus IV to restore ecclesiastical authority in Umbria.

This selection can be seen as a compromise between factions, Borgia and della Rovere, picking a frail cardinal with long experience in the Curia over the kin of either Sixtus IV or Alexander VI.

Instigated by the king of Spain and the duke of Mayenne, he excommunicated Henry IV of France on 1 March 1591, reiterating the 1585 declaration of Pope Sixtus V that as a heretic ( Protestent ) Henry of Navarre was ineligible to succeed to the throne of Catholic France and deprived of his dominions.

The influence of his friends procured for him, from Pope Paul II ( 1464 – 71 ), the bishopric of Savona, and in 1473, with the support of Giuliano Della Rovere, later Pope Julius II, he was made cardinal by Pope Sixtus IV, whom he succeeded on 29 August 1484 as Pope Innocent VIII.

Giuliano della Rovere was the son of Rafaello della Rovere nephew of Pope Sixtus IV and of Theodora Manerola, a lady of Greek extraction.

Giuliano was an altar boy of his uncle Pope Sixtus IV ( Francesco della Rovere ).

Giulliano della Rovere, as cardinal, age 34 ( left ) with uncle and patron Francesco della Rovere, Pope Sixtus IV ( right ).

His remains, along with those of his uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, were later desecrated during the Sack of Rome in 1527.

Pope Sixtus IV ( 21 July 1414 – 12 August 1484 ), born Francesco della Rovere, was Pope from 1471 to 1484.

Like a number of Popes, Sixtus IV adhered to the system of nepotism.

After the murder in that year of Henry III of France, Pope Sixtus V sent Enrico Caetani as legate to Paris to negotiate with the Catholic League of France, and chose Bellarmine to accompany him as theologian.

Their family is notable for their bitter feud with the Orsini family over influence in Rome until it was stopped by Papal Bull in 1511 ; in 1571 the Chiefs of both families married nieces of Pope Sixtus V.

In the 16th century Sixtus V bisected Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere with a cross-wing to house the Apostolic Library in suitable magnificence. The 16th and 17th centuries saw other privately endowed libraries assembled in Rome: the Vallicelliana, formed from the books of Saint Filippo Neri, with other distinguished libraries such as that of Cesare Baronio, the Biblioteca Angelica founded by the Augustinian Angelo Rocca, which was the only truly public library in Counter-Reformation Rome ; the Biblioteca Alessandrina with which Pope Alexander VII endowed the University of Rome ; the Biblioteca Casanatense of the Cardinal Girolamo Casanate ; and finally the Biblioteca Corsiniana founded by the bibliophile Clement XII Corsini and his nephew Cardinal Neri Corsini, still housed in Palazzo Corsini in via della Lungara. The Republic of Venice patronized the foundation of the Biblioteca Marciana, based on the library of Cardinal Basilios Bessarion. In Milan Cardinal Federico Borromeo founded the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

The name of Sixtus is often connected with a great building boom in Rome: Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill was dedicated during his pontificate and he built Santa Maria Maggiore, whose dedication to Mary the Mother of God reflected his acceptance of the Ecumenical council of Ephesus which closed in 431.

Sixtus continued a dispute with King Louis XI of France, who upheld the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges ( 1438 ), according to which papal decrees needed royal assent before they could be promulgated in France.

Louis was thus in conflict with the papacy and Sixtus ( as a princely strategist himself ) could not permit it.

Pietro became one of the richest men in Rome and was entrusted with Sixtus IV's foreign policy.

The secular fortunes of the Della Rovere began when Sixtus invested his nephew Giovanni with the lordship of Senigallia and arranged his marriage to the daughter of Federico III da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino ; from this union came a line of Della Rovere dukes of Urbino that lasted until the line expired in 1631.

In his territorial aggrandizement of the Papal States, Sixtus IV's niece's son Cardinal Raffaele Riario, for whom the Palazzo della Cancelleria was constructed, was a leader in the failed " Pazzi conspiracy " of 1478 to assassinate both Lorenzo de ' Medici and his brother Giuliano and replace them in Florence with Sixtus IV's other nephew, Girolamo Riario.

Nevertheless, Sixtus IV quarrelled over protocol and prerogatives of jurisdiction, was unhappy with the excesses of the Inquisition and condemned the most flagrant abuses in 1482.

In 1475 he went to Rome to work with Pope Sixtus IV on calendar reform.

Sixtus IV ( 1471 – 1484 ) established the practice of selling indulgences to be applied to the dead, thereby establishing a new stream of revenue with agents across Europe.

* The four fountains ( Quattro Fontane ) with reclining river gods ( 1588 – 93 ) commissioned by Pope Sixtus V.

This discretion contributed not a little to his election to the papacy on 24 April 1585, with the title of Sixtus V. The story of his having feigned decrepitude in the conclave, in order to win votes, is pure invention.

For refusing to desist from the very hostilities that he himself had instigated ( and for being a dangerous rival to Della Rovere dynastic ambitions in the Marche ), Sixtus IV placed Venice under interdict in 1483.

In the aftermath of the " Pazzi " conspiracy, Pope Sixtus IV placed Florence under interdict, forbidding Mass and communion, for the execution of the Salviati archbishop.

In 1587, two obelisks were removed by Pope Sixtus V, and one of these was re-sited at the Piazza del Popolo.

* Pope Sixtus III helps to settle a Christological dispute between the patriarchs Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch that has continued since the First Council of Ephesus, two years ago.

In 1474 Christian travelled two times: in April he went to Milan ( his stay in Lombardy is celebrated by frescoes by Il Romanino in the Malpaga Castle ) and Rome, in Italy, where he met Pope Sixtus IV.

Lorenzo did manage to save the nephew of Sixtus IV, Cardinal Raffaele Riario, who was almost certainly an innocent dupe of the conspirators, as well as two relatives of the conspirators.

One of his first acts was to order the publication, under his own name and authority, two works for the purpose of inciting Roman Catholics in England to rise up against Elizabeth: The Declaration of the Sentence of Sixtus V, a broadside, and a book, An Admonition to the nobility and people of England ( Antwerp, 1588 ).

In 1589 Pope Sixtus V dissolved the civilian government, but Pope Gregory XIV in 1591 ordered the reunification of the two powers ( papal and civilian ), thus sealing the definitive end of the free municipality.

Scotists of the fifteenth century included two popes, Alexander V and Sixtus IV, Elector Frederick III of Saxony and Angelus of Chivasso.

The Papal Apartments is the non-official designation for the collection of apartments, both private and state, that wrap around a courtyard ( the Courtyard of Sixtus V, Cortile de Sisto V ) on two sides of the third floor ( the top floor ) of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican City in Rome.

The two Italian congregations, the Lombardic and Sicilian, which had constituted themselves in the course of the fifteenth century, were united by Pope Paul III, and since Sixtus V enjoyed entire independence from the First Order.

The two basins of the ancient fountain are fed by the Acqua Felice aqueduct, one of the aqueducts of Rome, and the first new aqueduct of early modern Rome, completed in 1585 by Pope Sixtus V whose birth name was Felice Peretti.