a town of Peru, capital of a province of that name, in the department of Truxillo, on the left bank of the river Piura, 240 miles N.N.W. of Truxillo. It is built for the most part of brick, and the streets are narrow and unpaved. There is a public square in the middle of the town. The town contains several churches, government offices, and a college attended by 120 pupils. Some trade is carried on in maize, cotton, sugar, fruit, &c. Piura was the first Spanish settlement in Peru. It originally stood near the sea, but was removed to its present site on account of the unhealthiness of its former one. Pop. about 10,000.

PIUS I., succeeded Hyginus as bishop of Rome in 142, and died in 157.

PIUS II., Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, was born on the 18th of October 1405, at Corsigni in the Sienese, the name of which he afterwards changed into that of Pienza. Eneas was carefully educated, and made considerable proficiency in the belles-lettres. After having finished his studies at Siena, he in 1431 went to the council of Basil with Cardinal Capranica, surnamed De Fermo, because he was intrusted with the government of that church. Eneas, who acted as his secretary, was then only twenty-six years of age. He afterwards acted in the same capacity to some other prelates, and to Cardinal Albergati. The council of Basil honoured him with different commissions, in order to recompense him for the zeal with which he had defended that assembly against Pope Eugenius IV. He was afterwards secretary to Frederic III., who decreed to him the poetical crown, and sent him as ambassador to Rome, Milan, Naples, Bohemia, and other places. Nicholas V. advanced him to the bishopric of Trieste, which he quitted some time afterwards for that of Siena. At last, after having distinguished himself as nuncio on various occasions, he was invested with the Roman purple by Calixtus III., whom he succeeded two years afterwards, on the 27th of August 1458. Pius II., now advanced to the Holy See, exemplified the proverb, "Homores mutant mores." From the commencement of his pontificate he appeared to be jealous of the papal prerogatives. In 1460 he issued a bull declaring appeals from the Pope to a council to be null, erroneous, detestable, and contrary to the sacred canons. That bull, however, did not prevent the procurator-general of the Parliament of Paris from appealing to a council in defence of the Pragmatic Sanction, which the Pope had strenuously opposed. Pius was then at Mantua, whither he had gone to engage the Catholic princes to unite in a war against the Turks. The greater part of them had agreed to furnish troops or money; but others refused both, particularly France, which from that moment incurred his Holiness's aversion. But his aversion abated under Louis XI., whom in 1461 he persuaded to abolish the Pragmatic Sanction, which the Parliament of Paris had with so much vigour supported.

The following year, 1462, was rendered famous by a controversy which took place between the Cordeliers and Dominicans, whether or not the blood of Jesus Christ was separated from his body whilst he lay in the sepulchre. It was also made a question whether it was separated from his divinity. The Cordeliers affirmed that it was, but the Dominicans were of an opposite opinion. As usually happens in such disputes, the disputants called each other heretics; and this obliged the Pontiff to issue a bull, forbidding them, under pain of censure, to brand one another with such odious epithets. The bull, which his Holiness published on the 26th of April, retracting what he had written to the council of Basil when he was its secretary, if it somewhat impeached his consistency, was at least highly honourable to his frankness and candour. "If you find, then, anything contrary to her doctrine, either in our dialogues, in our letters, or in other of our works, despise these opinions, reject them, and adopt our present sentiments. Believe me rather now that I am an old man, than when I addressed you in my earlier days; esteem a sovereign Pontiff more than a private person; except against Eneas Sylvius, but receive Pius II." It might perhaps be objected to his Holiness, that it was his dignity alone which had made him alter his opinion. He anticipates that objection by giving a short account of his life and actions, with the whole history of the council of Basil, to which he went with Cardinal Capranica in 1431: "but," says he, "I was then a young man, and without any experience, like a bird just come from its nest." In the meantime, the Turks were threatening Christendom. Pius, ever zealous in the defence of religion against the infidels, formed the resolution of fitting out a fleet at the expense of the church, and of passing over into Asia himself, to animate the Christian princes by his example. He repaired to Ancona with a design to embark; but he there fell sick from the fatigue of the journey, and expired on the 16th of August 1464, aged fifty-nine.

Pius was one of the most learned men of his time, and also one of the most zealous pontiffs; but being of an ambitious disposition, he sometimes sacrificed to that weakness. His principal works are,—Memoirs of the Council of Basil, from the Suspension of Eugenius to the Election of Felix; The History of the Bohemians, from their Origin to the year 1458; Two books on Cosmography; The History of Frederic III., published in 1785, in folio; A Treatise on the Education of Children; A Poem upon the Passion of Jesus Christ; A Collection of Four Hundred and Thirty-Two Letters, printed at Milan 1473; The Memoirs of his own Life, published by John Gobelin Personne, his secretary, and printed at Rome in 1584, in 4to; Historia Rerum Ubiqueque Gestarum, of which only the first part was published at Venice in 1477, in folio. His works were printed at Helmstadt in 1700, in folio, with a Life prefixed prefixed.

Pius III., whose original name was Antonio Todeschini Pius succeeded Alexander VI. in 1503, and died in the course of twenty-five days afterwards.

Pius IV., whose real name was Giovanni Angelo Medici or Medichino, was originally of Milan, and was elected pope in 1559. The principal event in his pontificate was the conclusion of the long-protracted council of Trent, which took place in 1563, two years before his death.

Pius V., who was originally called Michele Ghislieri, was born at Boschi, in the north of Italy, in 1504, and succeeded Pius IV. in 1565. He mounted the papal chair with a reputation which foreboded no leniency towards the enemies of the Church. His character had become encrusted with a hard severity amid the gloom and asceticism of a Dominican convent. His enmity against heretics had been whetted to the keenest edge in the discharge of the functions of inquisitor. He had also cultivated a commanding eloquence, which could efficiently second his most thorough-going measures. Accordingly, Pius forthwith organized a rigorous system of policy for the reformation and strengthening of the Church. His first endeavour was to prove himself a rigid disciplinarian to the corrupt priesthood. He enforced the stringent rules of convent life upon the loose-living monks; he drove the non-resident clergy home to their benefices; he stript off the gaudy trappings and overthrew the luxurious tables of the worldly-minded cardinals. The same ardent zeal turned Pius into a firebrand against heretics. The pile was lighted under Carnecechi, a Florentine nobleman who had dared to investigate the opinions of the Reformers. The same punishment was administered to Palearius, a celebrated writer who had asserted in one of his works that the Inquisition was a sword drawn against learning. It was not even thought beyond the sphere of the Popedom to kindle and fan the flame of war in 1568 against the Protestants in France. Nor was Pius less arrogant in claiming supremacy over the kings of the earth. In 1568 he issued his famous bull entitled In Causa Domini, anathematizing every one who should dare to question, limit, or abjure the absolute authority of the Holy See, both in matters sacred and secular. In the following year he hurled the thunders of excommunication against Elizabeth, Queen of England, and absolved her subjects from their allegiance. A project for effectually humbling the Turks was also occupying his mind when he died of stone in 1572.

Pius VI., whose original name was Giovanni Angelo Braschi, was born at Cesena in 1717, and succeeded Clement XIV. in 1774. Elegant, devoted to letters, fond of the fine arts, and a well-wisher of progress, the new Pope inaugurated his rule with a series of enlightened and liberal-minded measures. The port of Ancona was adorned and improved by the addition of a beautiful lighthouse; the draining of the Pontine Marshes was undertaken, and carried on towards completion; the museum of the Vatican was extended to receive a new supply of the precious relics of antiquity; fountains and palaces were erected to revive the splendour of the Eternal City; and artists and scholars were summoned from all parts of Italy to recall the brilliant times of Leo X. Pius VI., however, though a successful promoter of the arts of peace, had not sufficient political sagacity to foresee and avert the attacks that were about to be made upon his authority. Accordingly the rest of his pontificate was involved in a long series of troubles. In 1780 the Emperor Joseph II. began to curtail the wealth and power of the Church. The example spread; and in 1787 the King of Naples abolished for ever certain feudal homages which were due to the court of Rome. Immediately afterwards followed the revolt of the Grand Duke of Tuscany from the spiritual supremacy of the Popedom. At length this ecclesiastical insurrection found its climax amid the general overthrow and destruction of the French Revolution. In that crisis the Pontiff's own possessions, and those of the Church within the kingdom of France, were confiscated by the National Assembly. On his protesting against these and other radical measures, his effigy, arrayed in all the pontifical insignia, was burnt by the mob in the garden of the Palais Royal. The murder of Beausseville, the French ambassador in 1793, by the Roman populace, widened the breach beyond all hope of settlement by negotiation; and in 1797 the papal territories were invaded by the troops of republican France. A submission, and an agreement to pay a fine of thirty millions of livres to the invaders were only the means of exciting new troubles. Compelled to impoverish his subjects in order to raise the contribution, he caused a general feeling of discontent. An insurrection was the consequence; the French general Duhaut was slain in the midst of the tumult; and the French army returned under Berthier to take more summary measures. In 1798 the Pontiff was dethroned, his property was confiscated, and he was obliged to leave Rome under the escort of a body of cavalry. Even in his state of degradation there was no rest to be found. He was removed from Siena to Florence, from Florence to France, until, in August 1799, he died at Valence, on the Rhone.

Pius VII., whose real name was Gregorio Luigi Barnaba Chiaramonti, was born of a noble family at Cesena in 1742, and was declared the successor of Pius VI. on the 14th March 1800. He had not long occupied the chair of St Peter when Napoleon set himself to turn the Popedom into a mere tool for his own ambition. Accordingly the new Pontiff began to be assailed with a series of the most arrogant exactions. In 1804 he was summoned to Paris to crown the French usurper. In the following year his port of Ancona was fortuitously seized by French troops. A command was then issued that he should shut up his dominions and close his harbours against all the enemies of France. In vain he remonstrated, asserting that he was the vicar of the Prince of Peace, and ought to stand aloof from all political dissensions. The bold aggressors, without waiting for what had been asked, gradually occupied the seaports; and, entering Rome in 1808, took the government into their own hands. In vain he had recourse to his last weapon, the bull of excommunication. The irreverent invaders entered the Quirinal Palace on the 6th July 1809, and carried him off, first to Grenoble, and then to Savona. Pius VII. was now more closely pressed than ever by Napoleon. In 1812 he was conveyed to Fontainebleau, that he might be awed into submission by the vicinity of the French capital. There also every stratagem was employed to make him subservient to the ambitious projects of the French potentate. He was plied successively with blandishments, taunts, and menaces, until, on the 25th January 1813, he was prevailed upon to sign a concordat. Then, when immediately afterwards he retracted his concessions, no attention was paid to him. It was not until, in 1814, the allied forces had overthrown Bonaparte, that he was restored to his place and power. The rest of the life of Pius VII. was chiefly devoted to social and political improvements. He died from an accident in August 1823.

Pius VIII., who was originally called Francesco Xavierio Castiglioni, was born near Ancona in 1761, became pope on the death of Leo XII. in 1829, and died in 1830.