Giovanni Gaetano Orsini (cardinal)

His Eminence Giovanni Gaetano Orsini
Cardinal deacon of San Teodoro
Orders
Created Cardinal	17 December 1316
Rank	Cardinal deacon
Personal details
Born	ca. 1285 Rome, Italy
Died	27 August 1335 Avignon, France
Buried	Church of the Franciscans, Avignon
Alma mater	University of Padua

Giovanni Gaetano Orsini (ca. 1285 - 27 August 1335), Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church from 17 December 1316 until his death, was a Roman nobleman, a nephew of Pope Nicholas III and a grandson of Matteo Rosso Orsini.

He was sometimes recorded under the names Gian Gaetano Orsini and Giangaetano Orsini.

In 1326 the Avignon Pope John XXII sent him as his Legate a latere to Italy, then much troubled by civil wars, with the task of bringing peace. In the event, Orsini found himself embroiled in battles with the Emperor, Ludwig of Bavaria and his antipope, Nicholas V. After taking Rome and becoming Captain of the City, he pursued his own Orsini interests, however, and lost the support of the Pope. He was dismissed as legate in 1334 and died the next year.

Orsini was the son of Matteo Rosso II Orsini, who was prominent in the public life of Rome in the 13th century, and a grandson of Matteo Rosso Orsini the great (1178–1246), who had held almost a dictatorship over Rome in the early 1240s. He was thus a member of the Monterotondo branch of the Orsini family. Born about 1285, he was given exactly the same name as his father's brother, Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, better known as Pope Nicholas III, who had died in 1280.

He was enrolled at the University of Padua from 1308 to 1310 and studied letters, including rhetoric. He seems not to have made a study of law formally, but he had a wide knowledge of it, while he had very little of theology. He was already a canon of Reims Cathedral before 1308.

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