Innocent VIII

Innocent VIII A Genoan born in 1432, Giovanni Battista Cibò was the son of a Roman senator and served in the court of Naples as a youth. Educated at Padua and Rome, he was made a cardinal in 1473 by Sixtus IV. A compromise candidate, Cibò was elected pope in 1484. As Pope Innocent VIII, he created and sold curial offices to end a fiscal crisis begun under Sixtus IV, whom he succeeded. Innocent married his illegitimate children into the princely families, and he was responsible for an increase in the persecution of "witches" in Germany. He agreed in 1489 to hold Sultan Bayezid II's brother prisoner in Rome in exchange for a yearly ransom and the lance of Longinus. Innocent recognized Henry Tudor as Henry VII of England and banned discussion of the works of Pico della Mirandola. In 1492, when the Spanish drove the Moors from Grenada, Innocent proclaimed a jubilee. Innocent died in July of that year.