X-Nico

5 unusual facts about Pope Clement IX


Louis, Grand Dauphin

At the ceremony, Cardinal de Vendôme and the Princess of Conti acted as proxies for the godparents, Pope Clement IX and Queen Henrietta Maria of England.

Ponte Sant'Angelo

In 1669 Pope Clement IX commissioned replacements for the aging stucco angels by Raffaello da Montelupo, commissioned by Paul III.

Pope Clement IX

He embellished the city of Rome with famous works commissioned to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, including the angels of Ponte Sant'Angelo and the colonnade of Saint Peter's Basilica.

At the end of October 1669 Clement IX fell ill after receiving news that the Venetian fortress of Candia in Crete had surrendered to the Turks.

He was also a patron of Nicolas Poussin, commissioning A Dance to the Music of Time from him and dictating its iconography.


Cistercian Rite

Under Claude Vaussin, General of the Cistercians (in the middle of the seventeenth century), several reforms were made in the liturgical books of the order, and were approved by Pope Alexander VII, Pope Clement IX and Pope Clement XIII.

Teatro delle Quattro Fontane

The theatre opened in 1632 with the opera, Sant' Alessio (Saint Alexis; first performed in 1631), composed by Stefano Landi to a libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi, a protégé of the Barberini Pope Urban VIII, later himself elected Pope Clement IX.


see also