The Medici were a powerful and influential Florentine family from the 13th to 17th century. There were four popes who were related to the Medici – Pope Leo X (December 11, 1475 – December 1, 1521), was pope from 1513 to his death. Pope Clement VII (May 26, 1478 – September 25, 1534), was a cardinal from 1513 to 1523 and was pope from 1523 to 1534, and Pope Pius IV (31 March 1499 – December 9, 1565), was pope from 1559 to 1565, who was not really one of their installments since he was only distantly related to the other Medici Popes. Nonetheless, Pope Leo XI (June 2, 1535 – April 27, 1605), was pope from April 1, 1605, to April 27 of the same year.
Why control the Papacy? The Church was actually instrumental in reviving capitalism. People going into the year 1000 were expecting the world to end. Even the King of England Aethelred II issued a rare coin for the year 1000 removing his portrait and replacing it with the Lamb of God. The Knights Templar began escorting people who wanted to visit the Holly-land, which led to the whole Crusades. The Knights Templar became bankers for they transported money that people wanted to donate to the Church in Rome.
The Avignon Papacy was the period from 1309 to 1377 when the King of France seized the Vatican, Italian bankers, and the Knights Templar all in a French grab for money It was the French pretend or anti-Pope who started the First Crusade (1096–1099), not Rome. When the Church broke free of its French captivity, in 1377, others began positioning themselves for control. Why? For money of course. There were no income taxes back then and people freely donated money to the Church.
Seizing the Papacy was the means to control the capital flows. St Peter’s Basilica in Rome began construction in 1506. Donations were pouring in to build that permanent church after what the French had done. Guess what! It was the first Medici Pope Leo X (1475–1521), who began that project. As a note from history, the front circular courtyard was based upon the idea that this was a port where ships would dock taken from the Roman ancient Port of Ostia picture on this coin of Nero (54-68AD).
Even Napoleon I waged war on Papacy. The papacy had the right to depose bishops, but this really made little difference since the French government nominated them. Priests were not always priests. They were political appointees not men with a calling. The French state would even pay clerical salaries and the clergy swore an oath of allegiance to the state not to God or the Church. The Papacy was forced to give up all claims to church lands that were taken after 1790 during the French Revolution and used to back paper money. Assignats were paper money issued by the National Assembly in France from 1789 to 1796, during the French Revolution. The assignats were issued after the confiscation of church properties in 1790 because the government was bankrupt.
As pope, Pius VII followed a policy of cooperation with the French-established Republic and Empire, albeit not willingly. France occupied and annexed the Papal States in 1809 and took Pope Pius VII as their prisoner, exiling him to Savona. The history of the Vatican is one of perpetual manipulation by various governments. It was finally reduced to just a tiny walled city inside Rome and recognized as its own tiny sovereign state in 1929, but after various governments has stripped it clean of all lands. Today, government no longer appoint bishops and priests. Tomas Becket was appointed as Archbishop in England and then killed by the king at the altar for his defiance. What made the priesthood even more notorious besides kings deciding who were bishops, was the fact that by custom the first son in a family inherited all wealth and the second was donated to the Church regardless of his calling.
To this day, people have tried to grab the Vatican Bank. It has long been rumored that Pope John Paul I was murdered for he wanted to investigate the Vatican Bank being used by the Mafia. Right now, the Vatican’s main prosecutor has frozen 16 million euros in bank accounts owned by two former Vatican bank managers and a lawyer as part of an investigation into the sale of Vatican-owned real estate in the 2000s.
