RARE DOCUMENT ON PARCHMENT IN THE NAME OF JACOPO ALDOBRANDINI THE APOSTOLIC SEE GRACE BISHOP TROIANUS: Given in the Apostolic Palace, in Naples Month August 23 of the year 1601.

Size: 17" x 13" (43 cm x 33 cm)

Jacopo Aldobrandini was appointed (13 March 1593) Apostolic Nuncio to Naples and, not much later (15 November 1593), Bishop of Troy and Assistant to the Clement VIII Throne

ALDOBRANDINI, Jacopo. - He was born in Florence in 1535 by Francesco (1508-1586) and Clarice Ardinghelli, from that branch of Brunetto Aldobrandini, who, at the fall of the Republic, had preferred serfdom to exile freedom. If a homonymy did not mislead the Litta, from 13 ag. 1545 he was assured a canonry in S. Lorenzo, to whom he renounced in 1550 to acquire a similar benefit in the underground in 1551; he was later a pievano of S. Pietro in Bossolo, auditor of the enunciator in Tuscany, apostolic vice-nuncio, and, finally, after 1585, having moved to Rome, he became the referendum of the Segnature. The 3 Dec. 1589 he was sworn in before assuming the post of deputy governor of Ancona, as lieutenant of the governor Virginio Orsini duke of Bracciano; a little over a year later (February 8, 1591), acquitted with honors, he was appointed governor of Fano and on February 25th. 1592 reported a certificate of honorable service. But his slow and obscure career had to have a sudden turning point because a few days before, on January 30th, Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini, who was his cousin in the third degree, had surrounded the tiara with the name of Clement VIII. While his brother Pietro had to be content with the rank of captain of the Papal Guard. 

From that moment he held the office without interruption for almost fourteen years, proving himself to be a patient and prudent negotiator, with little concern for the care of his Church (entrusted, with the role of vicar general, to the zealous archdeacon Felice Siliceo), but a diligent executor of the mandates of the Roman Curia and scrupulous tutor of ecclesiastical interests: the implementation of the Tridentine reform, the repression of heresy, the subtle jurisdictional controversies, the delicate situation of the Benevento territory, the laborious trials against ecclesiastical prevaricators provide matter - together with innumerable other disciplinary questions, patrimonial, political, religious - to the dense correspondence exchanged between the nuncio and the most representative personages of the Roman Curia, correspondence that the A. himself ordered diligently, keeping a copy of his own letters and arranging the others in chronological series (it now forms the files 192-224 in the series I of the Carte Strozziane in the Florence State Archives). The mainly bureaucratic mentality of the nuncio, his defect of Christian zeal and human warmth were particularly revealed during the trials for heresy and rebellion against Tommaso Campanella and the numerous rebels of the Calabrian conspiracy of 1599, processes that were debated before a court of delegates apostolic, constituted with the brief pontifical of 8 January. 1600 and presided by the Aldobrandini.

The death of Clement VIII, in 1605, marked the end of his assignment: now in his seventies, "weary and annoyed at the way of negotiating this side", he had himself invoked the replacement; on December 9th 1605 Cardinal Scipione Borghese, Secretary of State of Paul V, announced to him imminent the arrival of the bishop of Pavia, Guglielmo Bastoni, sent to replace him. The same month, after the deliveries, the old nuncio hastened to Florence, and died in this city: he died on 10 November. 1606 and was buried in S. Lorenzo