1 Testone - Innocent XI MELIVS EST DARE QVAM ACCIPERE

Innocent XI — Benedetto Odescalchi — was elected in 1676 after two inconclusive conclaves and immediately set about reforming a papacy he considered financially and morally dissolute. He slashed court expenditures, banned nepotism with unusual seriousness, and redirected papal funds toward the defense of Vienna against the Ottoman siege of 1683. The motto on this testone, "It is better to give than to receive," was not decorative piety — it reflected a pontificate that liquidated personal wealth and papal reserves to bankroll the Holy League.

His conflict with Louis XIV over Gallicanism and the régale affair ran concurrently with these issues, leaving the papacy diplomatically isolated from France precisely when it most needed unified Christian support.