Sixtus V

Sixtus V executed bandits by the thousand, rebuilt Rome in five years, and left the papal treasury full by taxing everything that moved. He was born Felice Peretti to a poor family in the Marches and worked as a swineherd as a boy before the Franciscans took him in; he became a famous preacher, an inquisitor in Venice, and a cardinal, and was elected pope in 1585. He began by attacking the banditry that had made the Papal States ungovernable, with summary justice and heads displayed on the Ponte Sant'Angelo in numbers his contemporaries found shocking; within two years travel was safe and the method was widely admired. He fixed the College of Cardinals at seventy, a number that held until 1958, and reorganised the Curia into fifteen permanent congregations, which is the administrative structure the Catholic Church still broadly uses. He rebuilt the city through his architect Domenico Fontana: the dome of St Peter's completed, four obelisks re-erected, the Acqua Felice aqueduct brought in, and long straight streets cut between the pilgrimage basilicas that fixed the modern plan of Rome. He raised money by selling offices and by loans and left five million crowns in Castel Sant'Angelo. He supported the Armada and the Catholic League in France while privately admiring Elizabeth and Henry of Navarre, and refused to pay Philip II until the Armada actually landed. His edition of the Vulgate was so full of errors it had to be withdrawn after his death. Rome celebrated his death by pulling down his statue. He drained part of the Pontine Marshes and tried to move the obelisk trade into a programme of public works employing the Roman poor. He canonised nobody and beatified few. He reigned five years and two months.

• Lived: 1521 CE – 1590 CE
• Nationality: Italian
• Roles: ruler