Guido Bentivoglio

Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio d' Aragona ( born October 4, 1579 Ferrara, † September 7, 1644 in Rome ) was an Italian cardinal, historian, and politician.

Life

As the youngest son of the Marquis Cornelio Bentivoglio and born of Isabella Bendidi in Ferrara, he came from the local branch of the Bentivoglio family from Bologna. He studied law at Ferrara and Padua, where he received his doctorate in canon and civil law in 1598. Back in Ferrara, he published his first writings, and thus attracted the attention of Pope Clement VIII, who took him as a private chamberlain to Rome.

Under Clement 's successor, Pope Paul V, he was to have reached 1607 Titular Archbishop of Rhodes, without the age required by canon law on May 14. With a papal available, he was sent as apostolic nuncio to Flanders. During the whole period of his stay (1 June 1607-24. October 1615 ), he was faced with the Jülich- Kleve Succession dispute on which ultimately sparked the Thirty Years War. Before he returned to Rome in 1621, he was Papal Nuncio to France. The Bentivoglio family had in 1619 acquired a palace on the Quirinal Palace (Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi ), which was obtained from Guido Bentivoglio after his appointment as cardinal in 1621.

On behalf of the French king commissioned Cardinal Richilieu in the same year Bentiviglio with the perception of French interests in the Holy See, which he held until 1641.

As a papal inquisitor sat Bentivoglio on June 22, 1633 his signature to the sentence against Galileo Galilei.

Because of his diplomatic successes, his writings and his position as inquisitor he was after the death of Pope Urban VIII promising candidate in the succession to the Holy See. Shortly after the start of the conclave, he died suddenly from inexplicable reason. He was buried in the Church of San Francesco nel Quirinale.

Bentivoglio was a lover of art and music. Immediately after his arrival in Flanders he had let the organist and composer Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) from Ferrara to come to Brussels, where he was a celebrated musician and with help from Bentivoglio in Antwerp in 1608 published his madrigals. It is certain that Bentivoglio also had contact with local artists such as Rubens. Later he preferred in particular the Flemish artists such as Anthony van Dyck and François Duquesnoy " il Fiammingo " of which he was portrayed.