The POPE Encyclopedia
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NEPOTISM
The granting of offices, preferments, and positions of influenee to family members and relatives. The history of the papacy is replete with incidents of nepotism, since the practice became common custom in the Middle Ages when popes belonged to prominent families and noble houses and there were many relatives to reward. The institution of the so-called cardinal nephew became so pervasive, in fact, that the word nepotism is taken from the Italian nepoti (nephew). The nepotistic tendencies of the popes stemmned in large part from the need for a pontiff to appoint reliable individuals to posts in his administration without fear of scheming and ambitions by those outside his family. That the custom was a problem by the eleventh century can be seen in the denunciation of the practice by Pope Sylvester II (999-1003). It continued unabated throughout the medieval epoch and into the Renaissanee, reaching a peak during, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the cardinal nephew system was a fully accepted part of papal life. The reforms of the papacy gradually ended nepotism, culminating with the proclamation of Pope Innocent XII (1691- 1700), Romanum Decet Pontificem (1692), in which he decreed that pontiffs should not grant offices or estates and only one relative should be permitted elevation to the purple.
THE POPE ENCYCLOPEDIA - Matthew Bunson Published by Crown Trade Paperbacks 201 East 50th Street, New York New York 10022, USA ISBN 0-517-88256-6
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