1 Testone - Innocent XI MELIVS EST DARE QVAM ACCIPERE

Innocent XI — Benedetto Odescalchi — was elected in 1676 largely because Louis XIV blocked every other serious candidate, a miscalculation the French king spent the next two decades regretting. The two men clashed bitterly over Gallicanism, the appointment of French bishops, and ultimately over the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which Innocent opposed. While that political war ground on in correspondence, Innocent was simultaneously bankrolling a very real one: his financial backing of the Holy League proved decisive at Vienna in 1683, breaking the Ottoman siege and reshaping the eastern frontier of Catholic Europe.

The motto on this testone — "it is better to give than to receive" — was not rhetorical for Odescalchi. He had been a banker before taking orders.