SIXTUS V. (pope), the most extraordinary man of his time. His father, a poor vine-dresser, unable to maintain him, put him out to a farmer, who made him keep his sheep, and afterwards his hogs. His real name is not known, but in this station he called himself Felix; and, from his earliest youth, he seems to have had an unaccountable prepossession or impulse of his future greatness. By degrees he rose to be inquisitor at Venice; but quarrelling with the senate, he was obliged to quit the territories of the republic. Being rallied upon his precipitate retreat, he replied, that having made a vow to be pope at Rome, he did not think it right to stay to be hanged at Venice. By his intrigues and address he obtained a cardinal's hat from pope Pius V. By an affectation of great humility, and the appearance of being loaded with bodily infirmities, he so far deceived the conclave, after the death of pope Gregory XIII. that, being divided into factions, in order to put an end to the hopes and cabals of each, they elected him pope, imagining that he would not live long, and in the mean time that the factions would be weakened, and render the choice of a successor less difficult. Sixtus was no sooner elected, than he threw away his crutch, and with it all his assumed debility, to the great astonishment of the whole conclave. Nor was the change in his manners remarkable than in his person. Instead of his former humility and complaisance, he treated every one with reserve and haughtiness; those particularly who had been most instrumental in his exal-
tation. The lenity of his predecessor Gregory's government had introduced a licentiousness among all ranks of people: but the reformation of abuses both in church and state was the first and principal care of Sixtus; and this he signified very early. It had been customary with many preceding popes to order the prison-doors to be set open on the day of their coronation; and in expectation of this act of grace, many of the banditti and other delinquents were wont to surrender themselves on the election of a new pope. Sixtus, on the contrary, ordered that four of the most notorious offenders should be publicly executed at the very time of his coronation; two by the axe, and two by the halter: and, in conformity to the resolution he had taken, he put an early stop to the profligacy of the people, he conducted himself with an unexampled severity in the punishment of offenders, without the least respect to persons; of which many instances are recorded. He particularly directed the legates and governors of the ecclesiastical state to be expeditious in their criminal processes; declaring, he had rather have the gibbets and galleys full than the prisons; and had in view the shortening law-proceedings in general. At his accession to the papacy, he found the apostolic chamber not only exhausted, but in debt; he left it clear, and enriched with five millions of gold. To him the city of Rome was obliged for several of its greatest embellishments, particularly the Vatican library; and to him its citizens were indebted for the introduction of trade into the ecclesiastical state. This great man, who was also a patron of learning and of men of genius, died, not without the suspicion of having been poisoned by the Spaniards, in 1590; having enjoyed the papacy little more than five years. A Latin version of the Bible, compiled by his order, appeared in the same year, in three vols folio; but so many faults were discovered in it, that it was suppressed by his successor Gregory XIV. Clement VIII. who succeeded Gregory caused a new edition to be printed, in which the errors of the first are corrected; and this is very scarce.