fwo_542894 - ITALIA - PAPAL STATES - INNOCENT VIII (Giovanni Battista Cibo) 1 Cavallo N.D. L’Aquila degli Abruzzi

ITALIA - PAPAL STATES - INNOCENT VIII (Giovanni Battista Cibo)

(1484-1492)

Jean-Baptiste Cibo, born in Genoa in 1432, was elected pope on August 29, 1484 and was consecrated on the following September 12 under the name of Innocent VIII. He succeeded Sixtus IV who died on August 12, 1484. In 1487, following the policy of his predecessors, Innocent VIII launched a campaign against the Waldenses, a current of evangelicalism and anticlericalism that appeared at the end of the 12th century (in 1532 the Waldensians definitively broke with the Church by attaching themselves to Protestantism). He is best known for his condemnation of Jean Pic de la Mirandola whose theses, partly inspired by Jewish Kabbalah, scandalized the theologians of Rome. Innocent VIII died in Rome on July 25, 1492; Alexander VI (1492-1503) succeeded him.