Michele Mazzarino

Michele Mazzarino, or Mazzarini, also known as Michel Mazarin, (Pescina, 1 September 1605 – Rome, 31 August 1648) was an Italian Cardinal and statesman in the service of France.

Mazzarino was born in Pescina, Italy, then part of the Kingdom of Naples, but was raised in Rome. His baptismal name was Alessandro. His father was Pietro Mazzarini, and his mother was Ortensia Buffalini, a woman of a noble family of Città di Castello in Umbria, and a god-daughter of Filippo I Colonna, the grand Constable of Naples. He was one of six children, the oldest of whom, Giulio Mazzarino, would become a Cardinal and chief minister under Louis XIV of France, under the new name of Cardinal Mazarin.

Mazzarino entered the Dominican Order at the convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome in 1620, at the age of fifteen, and took the new name of Michele in honor of his grand-uncle Cardinal Michele Bonelli. In 1624 he was sent to complete his studies at the studia of the Order in Viterbo and Bologna, where he studied theology with Tommaso Turco.

Mazzarino was ordained a priest in 1628. After his ordination he taught theology at the College of Saint Thomas, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome. Mazzarino became provincial of the Dominican Order in Apulia in 1635. In 1637 the Master General of the Order of Preachers, Niccolò Ridolfi, appointed Mazzarino as Vicar of the Province of Rome, and in April 1638 he was elected as Provincial.

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