Giovanni Battista Maria Pallotta

Most Reverend Giovanni Battista Maria Pallotta
Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati
Giovanni Battista Maria Pallotta
Church	Catholic Church
Orders
Consecration	10 Dec 1628 by Melchior Klesl
Created Cardinal	26 May 1631
Rank	Cardinal-Priest
Personal details
Born	23 Jan 1594 Caldarola, Italy
Died	22 Jan 1668 (age 73)
Nationality	Italian

Giovanni Battista Maria Pallotta (also Palotta or Palotto) (23 January, 1594 – 22 January, 1668) was an Italian Catholic Cardinal.

Pallotta was born in 1594 in Caldarola to a well respected family. He was the nephew of Cardinal Giovanni Evangelista Pallotta who left him a considerable inheritance which allowed him to be educated and take up an ecclesiastic career in Rome.

He was educated in Perugia and then went to Rome during the pontificate of Pope Paul V.

He was appointed Governor of Rome by Pope Urban VIII and was recognised as a particularly pious and strict lawmaker. His contemporary, John Bargrave, detailed the fate of one particular courtesan who flouted Pallotta's edict. Pallotta had decreed that no person should be masked on the Via del Corso during carnivale and ascribed punishments of imprisonment and public flagellation should anyone fail to comply. Local prostitute Checa Buffona was nonetheless paraded along the corso and was subsequently imprisoned. Upon hearing this, Cardinal Antonio Barberini (the Pope's nephew, who Bargrave suggested was a client of Buffona) demanded she be released. Pallotta complied but not before ordering that Buffona be publicly whipped before Barberini could reach the prison to oversee her release.

Aware that a conflict between his nephew and his Governor was likely, Pope Urban sent Pallotta to Portugal as papal nuncio and Collector-General. There, in an effort to uphold ecclesiastic jurisdiction over the Portuguese court, he attempted to excommunicate every member of the King's Council.