Giovanni Vitelleschi

Giovanni Maria Vitelleschi (died 1 or 2 April 1440) was an Italian cardinal and condottiere.

Vitelleschi was born in Corneto (modern Tarquinia, then part of the Papal States), some kilometers north to Rome. He received a military education, which he refined as apostolic protonotary under Pope Martin V. The fighting bishop of Recanati from 1431, and afterwards made a cardinal, he was commander of the papal armies of Pope Eugene IV when the Colonna faction at Rome, infuriated by the reversal of their fortunes when Eugene succeeded Martin V (a member of the Colonna), backed an insurrection that raised a temporary republic at Rome and forced Eugene into exile at Florence in May 1434. The city was restored to obedience by Giovanni Vitelleschi in the following October, in a display of ferocious cruelty. Vitelleschi abrogated all Roman rights and had the Roman senate declare him tertius pater patriae post Romulum ("the third Father of his Country since Romulus"). He commanded the papal troops against René of Anjou, who claimed the throne of Naples. In 1439 he was sent by the Pope to expel the rebel Corrado IV Trinci from Foligno, which he besieged and captured. The nobleman was beheaded and the city restored to Papal authority.

Vitelleschi had received his military training as a youth in the banda of Tartaglia and refined his education under the tutelage of Pope Martin V, who made him apostolic pronotary. His success at putting down the republicans at Rome earned him the purely honorary title Patriarch of Aquileia and the more immediate one of archbishop of Florence. He was made a cardinal on 9 August 1437 and was called the "Cardinal of Florence" where, according to Machiavelli, he was regarded with deep distrust:

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