[Footnote 65:  Paolo Tiepolo, op. cit. p. 312.]

[Footnote 66:  Ibid. p. 214.]

While he was yet a layman, Gregory became the father of one son, Giacomo.  Born out of wedlock, he was yet acknowledged as a member of the Buoncompagno family, and admitted under this name into the Venetian nobility.[67] The Pope manifested paternal weakness in favor of his offspring.  He brought the young man to Rome, and made him Governatore di Santa Chiesa with a salary of 10,000 ducats.  The Jesuits and other spiritual persons scented danger.  They persuaded the Holy Father that conscience and honor required the alienation of his bastard from the sacred city.  Giacomo was relegated to honorable exile in Ancona.  But he suffered so severely from this rebuff, that terms of accommodation were agreed on.  Giacomo received a lady of the Sforza family in marriage, and was established at the Papal Court with a revenue amounting to about 25,000 crowns.[68] The ecclesiastical party now predominant in Rome, took care that he should not acquire more than honorary importance in the government.  Two of the Pope’s nephews were promoted to the Cardinalate with provisions of about 10,000 crowns apiece.  His old brother abode in retirement at Bologna under strict orders not to seek fortune or to perplex the Papal purity of rule in Rome.[69]

[Footnote 67:  The Venetians, when they inscribed his name upon the Libro d’Oro, called him ‘a near relative of his Holiness.’]

[Footnote 68:  This lady was a sister of the Count of Santa Fiora.  For a detailed account of the wedding, see Mutinelli, Stor. arc. vol. i. p. 112.]

[Footnote 69:  Tiepolo, op. cit. pp. 213, 219—­221, 263, 266.]

I have introduced this sketch of Gregory’s relations in order to show how a Pope of his previous habits and personal proclivities was now obliged to follow the new order of the Church.  It was noticed that the mode of life in Rome during his reign struck a just balance between license and austerity, and that general satisfaction pervaded society.[70] Outside the city this contentment did not prevail.  Gregory threw his States into disorder by reviving obsolete rights of the Church over lands mortgaged or granted with obscure titles.  The petty barons rose in revolt, armed their peasants, fomented factions in the country towns, and filled the land with brigands.  Under the leadership of men like Alfonso Piccolomini and Roberto Malatesta, these marauding bands assumed the proportion of armies.  The neighboring Italian States—­Tuscany, Venice, Naples, Parma, all of whom had found the Pope arbitrary and aggressive in his dealings with them—­encouraged the bandits by offering them an asylum and refusing to co-operate with Gregory for their reduction.

[Footnote 70:  Giov.  Corraro, op. cit. p. 277.]