Pope Gregory XV
1554 CE–1623 CE · Italy (Soncino/Bologna)
Born Alessandro Ludovisi in Bologna and educated by the Jesuits, Gregory XV reigned only two and a half years but left durable institutional marks. In 1622 he founded the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide) to coordinate global Catholic missions, a body that shaped missionary work for centuries. That same year he canonized Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, and Philip Neri. He reformed the procedures of papal elections, introducing secret written ballots that long governed conclaves. Frail throughout his reign, he relied heavily on his capable cardinal-nephew Ludovico Ludovisi to administer affairs.
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Italy (Soncino/Bologna)איטליהItaly
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About Italy (Soncino/Bologna)
Italy, in southern Europe, is treated here as the country as a whole. Rome is the seat of the papacy, and the popes ruled the Papal States in central Italy until Italian forces took Rome in 1870, completing the unification begun when the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861; the country became a republic in 1946. Italy also has one of the oldest Jewish diasporas, attested in Rome by the 2nd century BCE. In the Renaissance it was a centre of Hebrew printing, where the Soncino press issued the first complete printed Hebrew Bible in 1488, and of Jewish biblical commentary: Isaac Abarbanel spent his last years in Italy, and Ovadiah Sforno taught in Rome and Bologna.
In Italy (Soncino/Bologna) at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Pope Gregory XV’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Pope Innocent IX, Robert Bellarmine, Pope Urban VIII, Pope Innocent X, Pope Clement X
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope Gregory XV’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.