Innocent XI — Benedetto Odescalchi — was beatified in 1956 and remains one of the most fiscally austere popes of the early modern period, having spent much of his pontificate trying to finance a Christian coalition against the Ottoman advance into Central Europe. The motto on this testone, drawn from Acts 20:35, was not decorative piety: Innocent refused nepotism so categorically that he declined to elevate his own relatives to any office, a posture so unusual it drew comment from contemporary observers across Catholic Europe.
His alliance-building culminated in the Holy League of 1684, the year this issue begins — the same coalition that would relieve Vienna and push the Ottomans back from Hungary.
Innocent XI — Benedetto Odescalchi — was beatified in 1956 and remains one of the most fiscally austere popes of the early modern period, having spent much of his pontificate trying to finance a Christian coalition against the Ottoman advance into Central Europe. The motto on this testone, drawn from Acts 20:35, was not decorative piety: Innocent refused nepotism so categorically that he declined to elevate his own relatives to any office, a posture so unusual it drew comment from contemporary observers across Catholic Europe.
His alliance-building culminated in the Holy League of 1684, the year this issue begins — the same coalition that would relieve Vienna and push the Ottomans back from Hungary.