Latest / The Story of Italy: Rome, Renaissance, and the Birth of Modern Europe — Fexingo History
The Papal Bankers Who Funded the Renaissance
While we have traced the Medici influence and the Venetian spy networks, there was another engine driving the financial and artistic revolution of sixteenth-century Italy: the papal treasury itself. This episode explores how the Catholic Church became the world’s largest bank, managing the flow of gold from across Europe to fund St. Peter’s Basilica and the wars of the Popes. We focus on Agostino Chigi, the Sienese banker who dominated the papal finances under Julius II and Leo X. Through his network of agents in London, Antwerp, and Seville, Chigi moved bullion that paid for Michelangelo’s…
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